Nanowerk February 23, 2022 Self-organized vortex of rotating microparticles in a fluid will reverse direction when an electric stimulus is interrupted and then reapplied with the same orientation. A team of researchers in the US (Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University) investigated how these collective self-assembled states can be controlled and manipulated, and what would happen when they stopped and then restarted the field fueling the motion of the particles. They found that the particles’ relative positions created a kind of distributed collective memory that caused them to begin to rotate in the opposite direction. They found that this phenomenon was […]
Tag Archives: Microparticles
World’s most complex microparticle: A synthetic that outdoes nature’s intricacy
Nanowerk April 10, 2020 The structural complexity of composite biomaterials and biomineralized particles arises from the hierarchical ordering of inorganic building blocks over multiple scales. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Michigan, Caltech, University of Pennsylvania, Brazil) assembled hierarchically organized particles (HOPs) with twisted spikes and other morphologies from polydisperse Au-Cyc nanoplatelets. Its complexity is higher than biological counterparts or other complex particles. Their intricate organization emerges from competing chirality-dependent assembly restrictions that render assembly pathways primarily dependent on nanoparticle symmetry rather than size. The researchers believe that the tactics they have uncovered can help scientists engineer […]