| Abstract Scope |
Janus and patchy particles combine multiple distinct functionalities that are promising for applications in many fields such as solid surfactants, self-assembly, sensing, targeted drug delivery, and catalysts. Polymer-based Janus particles have been synthesized by toposelective surface modification, template directed self-assembly, phase separation, controlled surface nucleation, and microfluidic methods. Metal-based Janus structures are studied to a lesser extent because their fabrication cannot be conveniently enacted like polymers. We report the fabrication of metal-metal, metal-polymer, and polymer-polymer Janus microstructures by embossing of thermoplastic metallic glasses and polymers. Structures with controllable shapes and sizes are synthesized by template-based embossing. Different manufacturing strategies such as co-embossing and additive embossing are demonstrated for encompassing materials with a diverse range of processing temperature and viscosities. Janus-type structures with distinct combinations of properties such as hydrophobic-hydrophilic, opaque-transparent, soft-hard, insulator-conductor (thermal & electrical), and ferromagnetic-paramagnetic are produced using this approach. |