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 broadband