ABSTRACT
Colloidal superparticles are particles that are made using nanocrystals as building blocks.1 Owing to the discrete and tunable structures in its optical and electronic characteristics, a nanocrystal is often referred to as an artificial atom.2,3 In the past two decades, advances in synthetic methodology have led to the preparation of a wide variety of high-quality nanocrystals with well-controlled size, shape, and composition.4 The shape of these high-quality nanocrystals includes spheres, as well as nonspherical structures such as cubes, plates, prisms, and rods.4,5 The composition of these nanocrystals includes metals, metal oxides, group II−VI, and III−V semiconductors.6 Importantly, these high-quality nanocrystals have enabled systematic elucidation of scaling laws of matter. The size-dependent phenomena studied are band gap,2,3 radiative rate,7solid−solid phase transition pressure,8 superparamagnetic transition temperature,9 and surface plasmon resonance frequency.10
