An important goal in soft matter physics is to steer microscale self-assembly processes. Here we show linear structures made of colloids and the energy landscape that describes the angular mobility...Show moreAn important goal in soft matter physics is to steer microscale self-assembly processes. Here we show linear structures made of colloids and the energy landscape that describes the angular mobility. It was done by functionalizing isotropic and anisotropic colloids with a lipid bilayer and insert DNA linkers that have a specific binding group. The DNA linkers are fully mobile along the particle surface and colloids functionalized with DNA linkers are able to form flexible polymers. Specifically, we looked at polymers consisting of four monomers: tetramers and found very mobile clusters that had an averaged joint mobility of 154 +- 3 deg2/s. In the energy landscape that we experimentally and theoretically found, we can conclude the preferred angles are 180/180 degrees. For polymers made of two dumbbell particles we found a mobile bilayer, but no mobile clusters were found. Our tunable tetramers could be the design for a model of controlled self-assembly in even larger structures and define the cluster properties.Show less
