SEMINAR
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

In Pursuit of Colloidal Diamond

Professor David Pine, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, New York University 

Abstract

While suspensions of colloidal particles self-assemble into a wide variety of crystalline lattices, making them assemble into the diamond lattice has proven elusive. The desire to do so has been driven by the fact that the a dielectric diamond lattice exhibits the widest photonic band gap of any known crystalline structure.  Here we report on the progress of strategies to realize a colloidal diamond lattice using DNA-coated colloids in various guises: patchy particles, particle clusters, and superlattices.

Biography

Dr. David Pine is Silver Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at New York University. Prior to assuming his appointment at NYU, he was Professor and Chair of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Materials at UCSB. Before that, he was a Staff Physicist at Exxon Corporate Research and an Assistant Professor at Haverford College. He is broadly interested in soft materials, light scattering, and optical materials. Current research interests include non-equilibrium phase transitions, self-assembly of colloids and emulsions, DNA-coated particles and programmed self-assembly, colloids with directional interactions, colloidal glasses, and photonic materials. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.