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Monday, May 28, 2018

Optomechanically Assisted Assembly of Surface‐Functionalized Zeolite‐L‐Based Hybrid Soft Matter

Álvaro Barroso, Tim Buscher, Katrin Ahlers, Armido Studer, Cornelia Denz

Nanoporous particles are particularly interesting for the assembly of functional nano‐ and microsystems because they provide hierarchical supramolecular organization of a large variety of guest molecules. In this work, arbitrary nanoarchitectures consisting of nanoporous zeolite‐L crystals are assembled by combining holographic optical tweezers (HOT) with polymer brush functionalized particles to overcome the limitations of 1D and restricted self‐assembly of zeolite‐L crystals. Readily prepared and functionalized polymer shells allow for controlled, instant, and highly efficient particle–particle and particle–surface adhesion without the need for an external trigger. In contrast to earlier studies, these assemblies remain permanently stable after release out of the HOT system. This novel strategy can be used to fabricate either motile units or locally grounded 1D, 2D, and 3D microconstructions, which can be further utilized as microtools in microfluidic and nanophotonic applications.

DOI

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