Simulation Study of Dipole-Induced Self-Assembly of Nanocubes

Recent experiments have demonstrated that nanoparticles with dipoles can self-assemble into interesting one-dimensional and two-dimensional nanostructures. In particular, nanocubes with dipoles are found to form straight nanowires and nanorings with potential applications for nanodevices. In this paper, we use a minimal model to study dipole-induced self-assembly of nanocubes with varying dipole directions, dipole strengths and both with and without face−face attractions arising from dispersive or solvophobic interactions. We reproduce the structures observed in experiments and illustrate that the self-assembled morphologies are dictated by the head-to-tail alignment of the dipoles, the orientation of the dipoles within the cubes, and the face-to-face packing of the nanocubes. Our results show how the self-assembly of dipolar nanocubes differs from that of dipolar spheres in which the only anisotropy is the dipole itself and how system parameters can be manipulated to control the assembled morphologies an...

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