Construction and design of advanced colloidal complexes from anisotropic particles
We aim to establish a multidisciplinary research program focusing on the design and self-assembly of anisotropic colloidal particles into colloidal complexes in the presence/absence of external fields. We seek to achieve control over the anisotropies by means of component variation, shape tuning and surface functionality of the building materials. We envisage that these anisotropic build blocks will not only offer a direct route enriching our understanding of molecular behaviours (isomerisation, chirality and steric hindrance) at colloidal scales but will also open up a huge range of exciting possibilities in constructing novel colloidal structures and their application in controllable devices, such as colloidal surfactant and micro-swimmer.