Multiscale modeling of the surfactant mediated synthesis and supramolecular assembly of cobalt nanodots

Multiscale simulations are used to bridge the surfactant templated assembly of individual similar to1-10 nm cobalt dots, to their ordering into supramolecular arrays. Potential energy surfaces derived from ab initio calculations are input to lattice Monte Carlo simulations at atomic scales. By this process we quantitatively reproduce the experimental cobalt nanoparticle sizes. Crucially, we find that there is an effective short range attraction between pairs of nanodots. Mesoscale simulations show that these attractive interdot potentials are so short ranged that the dots can assemble only into orientally ordered hexatic phases as in the experiments.