Formation of diverse supercrystals from self-assembly of a variety of polyhedral gold nanocrystals.

Cubic, rhombic dodecahedral, octahedral, and corner-truncated octahedral gold nanocrystals with sizes of tens of nanometers have been used as building blocks to form micrometer-sized supercrystals by slowly evaporating a water droplet on a substrate placed in a moist environment. Drying the droplet at 90 °C was found to yield the best supercrystals. Supercrystals were evenly distributed throughout the entire substrate surface originally covered by the droplet.