Simple cubic packing of gold nanoparticles through rational design of their dendrimeric corona.

The first simple-cubic liquid crystal was obtained by coating monodisperse Au nanoparticles (NPs) with a thick corona of amino-substituted organic dendrons. This unusual structure was determined by grazing-incidence diffraction and electron density reconstruction and explained by analyzing the radial density profile of the corona. Another novel structure is proposed for the phase preceding the cubic one: a hexagonal superlattice composed of alternating dense and sparse strings of Au NPs.