Colloidal Assembly and Fabrication

Recent advances in synthesis techniques and computation are enabling colloidal particles to be treated like “smart atoms”, and the result is the bottom-up synthesis of structures that resemble actual molecules. Colloidal crystals, dipoles, stars, and other shapes have been created, and new shapes are being conceived and modeled computationally. This symposium will consist of papers demonstrating colloidal assemblies that contain significant information (fluorescent groups, targeting particles), complexity (e.g., shape, core-shell, biological-particle constructs), assembly forces (magnetics, receptor-ligand, complementary DNA), and functionality (environmental remediation, optical properties). Topics will include site-specific chemistry (e.g., electrostatic forces, DNA, protein-mediated), modeling (e.g., Monte Carlo, Stokesian dynamics), characterization (e.g., confocal microscopy, electron microscopy, AFM), and applications (e.g., drug delivery, robotics, environmental, medical, electronic).