Controlling the Growth of Charged‐Nanoparticle Chains through Interparticle Electrostatic Repulsion

An electrostatic tuner : Long‐range isotropic electrostatic repulsion between identically charged nanoparticles can become anisotropic in the presence of short‐range anisotropic dipolar interactions, thus endorsing anisotropic self‐assembly of the nanoparticles into chains. The length of these particle chains can be tuned by controlling the interparticle electrostatic repulsion (see image).