Competing forces coax nanocubes into helical structures

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SEM image of a well-defined double helix Nanocubes are anything but child’s play. Weizmann Institute scientists have used them to create surprisingly yarn-like strands: They showed that given the right conditions, cube-shaped nanoparticles are able to align into winding helical structures. Their results, which reveal how nanomaterials can self-assemble into unexpectedly beautiful and complex structures, were recently published in Science. Dr. Rafal Klajn and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Gurvinder Singh of the Institute’s Organic Chemistry Department used nanocubes of an iron oxide material called magnetite. As the name implies, this material is naturally magnetic: It is found all over the place, including inside bacteria that use it to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. Magnetism is just one of the forces acting on the nanoparticles. Together with the research group of Prof. Petr Král of the University of Illinois, Chicago, Klajn and Singh developed theoretical models to understand how the various forces could push and pull the tiny bits of magnetite into different formations. “Different types of forces compel the nanoparticles to align in different ways,” says Klajn. “These can compete with one another; so the idea is to find the balance of competing forces that can induce the self-assembly of the particles into novel

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