Fig. 4
From: Hierarchical self-assembly of 3D lattices from polydisperse anisometric colloids
Experimental observation of plates assembling into 3D honeycomb lattice domains. a Schematics showing the hierarchical self-assembly process. The plates here have the dimensions, L: 1.28 ± 0.27 µm; L′: 0.19 ± 0.19 µm; tplate: 22 ± 2 nm; \(\bar m\) = 0.17. The yellow arrows denote the aligned plate orientations in the column. b Time-lapse optical microscopy images (left) showing the lying and standing orientations of the same rotating column. The bottom image is overlaid with contours color-coded according to local curvature. The color bar represents curvature values. The right plot shows the local curvature distributions of the standing column projection contours over time (pink: 0 s; gray: 1 s; purple: 1.5 s). Ionic strength: 3.2 mM. c Time-lapse optical microscopy images and schematic showing the assembly process of the columns into a “hexamer”. d An optical microscopy image of the assembled lattice with multiple ordered honeycomb domains. The image was processed following details in Supplementary Fig. 5. The bottom left image is an FFT of one honeycomb lattice domain in the green box. The bottom right plot is an orientation distribution map of the plates in the same lattice domain. e Pairwise interaction (green curve) and relative probability distribution normalized to Δθ = 0° (black curve) of the two stacked plates as a function of plate relative orientation Δθ. f A scatter plot showing the orientations of two plates in a nearest neighbor pair in the honeycomb domain over time. Each data point color corresponds to a different time. The measurement errors are ±2°. The color bar represents time. Ionic strengths in c–f: 3.5 mM. Scale bars: 1 µm in b; 2 µm in c; 5 µm in d
