Emergence of Complexity in Self-Limited Assemblies of Nanoparticles

Inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) have the ability to self-organize into variety of structures with sophisticated and dynamic geometries. Many of them are self-limited due to repulsive electrostatic interactions, which manifests in monodispersity of mesoscale superstructures formed from hundreds of polydispersed NPs. Remarkably, the organization of self-assembled NP systems can rival in complexity to those found in biology which reflects the biomimetic behavior of nanoscale inorganic matter. In this talk, I will address the mechanism and variety of self-limited assemblies of NPs and mechanisms of emergent complexity especially for chiral NPs. Self-limited assemblies of the latter
will illustrate the importance of subtle anisotropic effects stemming from collective behavior of NPs and non-additivity of their interactions. While these phenomena present obvious fundamental significance for instance as a path to spontaneous compartmentalization and protocells, the practicality of self-organization of nanoparticles will be discussed in relation to charge polarization-based optoelectronics, quantum optics, and chiral catalysis.