About project B7:
We are aiming to investigate the self-assembly of shape-anisotropic colloidal particles, which additionally exhibit anisotropic and controllable pair interactions. In contrast to a mere shape anisotropy, we expect that selective and directed particle interactions will largely modify the structures and the aggregation dynamics of such systems. Anisotropic interactions will be experimentally achieved by critical Casimir interactions, which are invoked by the spatial confinement of critical fluctuations in a binary mixture near its critical point. Using particles with partially functionalized surfaces, this will result in selective interactions whose magnitude and even sign can be controlled.