Recent Advances in Functional Nanoparticle Assemblies

Assemblies of colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) into various functional superstructures, such as ordered or nonordered, microscopic or macroscopic, and templated or self-supported, have recently attracted a lot of research interest. The continuous development of colloidal nanoparticle synthesis enables a fine-tuning of the structure and properties of such functional superstructures leading to numerous new applications. Herein, it is aimed to summarize a variety of assemblies based on ordered self-assembled NPs, e.g., stacked nanoplatelets, and nonordered self-assembled NPs, e.g., nanoparticle-based aerogels and cryoaerogels, systems ranging from the microscopic to the macroscopic range. Depending on the materials of the nanoparticle building blocks used, e.g., metallic, magnetic, semiconducting, or their combination in hybrid systems, both ordered and nonordered assemblies yield interesting properties for a wide variety of applications, such as catalysis, photocatalysis, or sensing, which are highlighted and discussed