Figure 4: Mechanism of self-assembly process.
From: Terminal supraparticle assemblies from similarly charged protein molecules and nanoparticles
(a) Pair potential between CdTe NPs and CytC according to Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey and Overbeek (DLVO) and extended-DLVO (E-DLVO) theories: VDLVO(red); VE-DLVO1 (green); VE-DLVO2 (blue) (Supplementary Methods). (b) ζ-potential values for the assembly of CdTe NPs with CytC at different time intervals. Error bars indicate the s.d. values from multiple measurements. (c) Spherical assemblies formed by a mixture of 1,000 NPs (yellow) and 1,000 CytC units (blue) at ρσ3=0.25. (d) Distribution of SP sizes and of the asphericity parameter (AS) (inset) of a system composed of 8,000 NPs and 8,000 CytC units (Supplementary Fig. 12a). AS=0 corresponds to perfect spheres. Error bars indicate 10 equilibrated, independent configurations separated by intervals of 2,000 τ. (e,f) Snapshots of mixtures with NP/CytC molar ratios of 2:1 and 6:1, respectively. (g) A snapshot of a system identical to (c), but without the inter-SP charge-charge repulsion renormalization. The images in (c,e,f and g) were generated using the software VMD. (h) Experimental and simulated data fitted against decaying laws, that is f(x)~exp(−x), and plotted against dimensionless inverse screening length (κ*) and normalized diameters (D*) (see Supplementary Methods for details).
