Lipid Vesicles Induced Ordered Nanoassemblies of Janus Nanoparticles

Using molecular dynamics of a coarse-grained implicit-solvent model, the adhesion modes of nanoparticles (NPs) on the outer side of lipid vesicles are explored. Specifically, Janus NPs are considered so that the amount by which they are wrapped by the vesicle is controlled. When two NPs adhere to the outer side of the vesicle, the curvature-mediated interaction leads to two main modes of adhesion. Namely, the NPs are either apart, or forming an in-plane dimer. More interesting, when the number of NPs on the vesicle is larger than two, they self-assembly into an array of highly ordered clusters, resulting from effective membrane-curvature mediated repulsion. These geometries include several deltahedra and three Platonic solids, corresponding to the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron. These results indicate that lipid vesicles can potentially be used as an alternative medium for bottom-up fabrication of tunable nanoassemblies with different geometries.