Synthesis and Applications of Non-spherical Dimer Colloids

Colloids are promising building blocks in material synthesis because of their controllability of size and surface properties. The synthesis of chemically and/or geometrically anisotropic colloidal particles has received attentions with the expectation of building blocks for complex structures. However, the synthesis of anisotropic colloidal particles is by far more difficult than the synthesis of spherical colloidal particles. Lack of monodispersity and productivity of many anisotropic particles often limits their applications as a building block for complex structures. Thus, it is highly desirable to develop methods which can produce a large amount of monodisperse non-spherical particles with controllable asymmetric surface properties. This dissertation details the work for developing such a method.