Debye <i>vs</i>. Casimir: controlling the structure of charged nanoparticles deposited on a substrate
Oleg A. Vasilyev, Emanuele Marino, Bas B. Kluft, Peter Schall, Svyatoslav Kondrat
Abstract
T weaker and their decay length a few orders of magnitude smaller than in the bulk. At off-critical compositions, the decay length increases upon approaching criticality, as expected, but the interaction strength decreases. With molecular dynamics simulations and experiments, we reveal that the nanoparticles can self-assemble into crystalline clusters which form superstructures resembling cluster fluids and spinodal morphology. The simulations additionally predict the formation of fractal-like nanoparticle gels and bicontinuous phases. Our results demonstrate that charged nanoparticles in a salty binary liquid mixture provide exciting opportunities to study the formation of complex structures experimentally and theoretically, which may lead to applications in optoelectronics and photonics.