Fig. 3.

TNS systems. (A) Schematic of a mono-TNS building block, where the eight tether beads (blue) of size σ aggregate and self-assemble spherical micelles with a soft core surrounded by relatively hard “satellite” nanoparticles (white) of size 2.5σ that act as mobile surface entities. (B) A simulation snapshot of approximately 60 micelles formed by mono-TNS that arrange into a sigma approximant, and (C) approximately 120 mono-TNS micelles that form a DQC-like structure; for both systems, ϕ = 0.275 and T = 1.1. (D) Histogram of asphericity, a_s, of the mono-TNS micelles in the sigma phase. (E) Schematic of the di-TNS building block, where the four beads in the tether (green) each of size σ aggregate and nanoparticles (white) of size 2σ are also attractive; four bead tethers (purple) of bead size σ that do not aggregate coat the outside of the micelle. (F) Approximately 60 di-TNS micelles arranged in a sigma approximant at ϕ = 0.2 and T = 1.2. (G) Representative di-TNS micelles with different a_s. In all cases, for clarity, we show density isosurfaces of the aggregating polymer tethers (i.e., the micelle core); additional views of the structures are included in the SI Text.