Complex colloidal microclusters from aerosol droplets.

In this Article, we report on a packing scheme of monodisperse colloidal nanospheres by aerosol-assisted clustering. When an aqueous suspension of colloidal nanospheres was sprayed into aerosol droplets by an ultrasonic nebulizer, the nanospheres were encapsulated in the aerosol droplets and the evaporation of water from the droplets at high temperatures led to the packings of nanospheres. The configurations of the colloidal nanospheres minimized the interparticle potential energy or the second moment of mass distribution depending on the number of the constituting nanospheres.