Controlled vapor treatment guides molecules into highly oriented soft quasicrystals
Molecules can spontaneously organize into complex, ordered structures through a process known as self-assembly. Among these structures, soft quasicrystals display unusual patterns that do not repeat regularly like conventional crystals. However, producing such structures with a uniform orientation over large areas remains a major challenge.
Researchers at National Taiwan University have discovered a method to control the self-assembly of molecules into highly oriented soft quasicrystals using a technique called vapor-induced self-assembly (VISA). Soft quasicrystals exhibit complex, non-repeating patterns, but forming them with uniform orientation over large areas has been difficult.
By manipulating temperature and molecular interactions, the researchers found that the same molecules can undergo different assembly pathways, leading to various ordered structures. They developed VISA to navigate the challenging pathway that results in highly oriented quasicrystals while suppressing competing orientations. By carefully controlling vapor treatment and cooling, they successfully formed a quasicrystal with a uniform 12-fold pattern extending over millimeter-scale regions.
This breakthrough demonstrates that controlling molecular assembly, rather than just the structures formed, can lead to the creation of complex materials with large-scale structural order.
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