Pressure-Tunable Photonic Band Gaps in an Entropic Colloidal Crystal

Abstract

Materials adopting the diamond structure possess useful properties in atomic and colloidal systems, and are a popular target for synthesis in colloids where a photonic band gap is possible. The desirable photonic properties of the diamond structure pose an interesting opportunity for reconfigurable matter: can we create a colloidal crystal able to switch reversibly to and from the diamond structure? Drawing inspiration from high-pressure transitions of diamond-forming atomic systems, we design a system of polyhedrally-shaped particles that transitions from diamond to a tetragonal diamond derivative upon a small pressure change. The transition can alternatively be triggered by changing the shape of the particle in-situ. We propose that the transition provides a reversible reconfiguration process for a potential new colloidal material, and draw parallels between this transition and phase behavior of the atomic transitions from which we take inspiration.

arXiv comment6 REVTeX pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (12)

• Band structure diagram paths based on crystallography
• Self-Assembly of Patchy Particles into Diamond Structures through Molecular Mimicry
• Understanding shape entropy through local dense packing
• Crystalline Assemblies and Densest Packings of a Family of Truncated Tetrahedra and the Role of Directional Entropic Forces
• Simple Data and Workflow Management with the signac Framework
• Scalable Metropolis Monte Carlo for simulation of hard shapes
• Digital Alchemy for Materials Design: Colloids and Beyond
• Relevance of Packing to Colloidal Self-Assembly
• Shape Driven Solid--Solid Transitions in Colloids
• Complexity in surfaces of densest packings for families of polyhedra
• Dimensionality and design of isotropic interactions that stabilize honeycomb, square, simple cubic, and diamond lattices
• Self-assembling DNA-caged particles: nanoblocks for hierarchical self-assembly

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Self-Assembled Chiral Photonic Crystals From Colloidal Helices Racemate
• Soft matter crystallography -- complex, diverse, and new crystal structures in condensed materials on the mesoscale
• Randomness in self-assembled colloidal crystals can widen photonic band gaps through particle shape and internal structure