Modeling the Self-Assembly of Nanoparticle Amphiphiles

We demonstrate that spherical nanoparticles, uniformly grafted with macromolecules, robustly self-assemble into a range of anisotropic superstructures when they are dispersed in the corresponding homopolymer matrix. Theory and simulations both suggest that this self-assembly process reflects a balance between the energy gain when particle cores approach and the entropy of distorting the grafted polymers. The effectively directional nature of the particle interactions is thus a many-body \textit{emergent property}.