Three-Dimensional Colloidal Nanocrystal Metamaterials
Cherie Kagan c
a Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
b Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
c Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Proceedings of MATSUS Fall 2025 Conference (MATSUSFall25)
B1 Emergent Properties in Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Phenomena, and Applications - #EmergentNano
València, Spain, 2025 October 20th - 24th
Organizers: Dmitry Baranov, Katherine Shulenberger and James Utterback
Invited Speaker, Cherie Kagan, presentation 062
Publication date: 21st July 2025

Colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) have inorganic cores and organic or inorganic ligand shells. They are prized for their size- and shape-dependent properties and serve as building blocks of artificial materials and unconventional devices. Here, we describe NC-based, three-dimensional optical metamaterials constructed using imprinting techniques single- and multiple-types of metal, metal oxide, and semiconductor NCs. We focus on the chemical and thermal addressability of NCs, i.e., the ability to select, exchange, strip, or add atoms, ions, and molecules during or post-deposition, that is not accessible in bulk materials, and allows the control of metamaterial structure and properties. Through ligand engineering we tailor the dielectric function of metal NC assemblies through an insulator-to-metal transition.1 By juxtaposing NC assemblies and bulk thin films to make bilayer heterostructures, we exploit ligand exchange to trigger folding of two- into three-dimensional structures,2 which we use to achieve broadband3,4 and reconfigurable5 3D chiral optical metamaterials and 3D chiral luminescent materials.

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