[{"language":[{"iso":"eng"}],"_id":"22645","publication_status":"published","department":[{"_id":"MaIb"},{"_id":"LifeSc"},{"_id":"GradSch"},{"_id":"CaGo"}],"day":"15","publication_identifier":{"issn":["0002-7863"],"eissn":["1520-5126"]},"has_accepted_license":"1","researchdata_availability":"no","month":"07","article_type":"original","publication":"Journal of the AmericanChemical Society","date_updated":"2026-08-04T06:47:13Z","acknowledged_ssus":[{"_id":"EM-Fac"},{"_id":"NMR"},{"_id":"LifeSc"}],"doi":"10.1021/jacs.6c07859","acknowledgement":"ISTA and the Werner Siemens Foundation financially supported this work. The Scientific Service Units (SSU) of ISTA supported this research through resources provided by the Electron Microscopy Facility (EMF), NMR Facility, and the Lab Support Facility (LSF). M.E. acknowledges financial support from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through Collaborative Research Centre 1411. We thank Dr. Tommaso Constanzo and Tobias Kleinhanns for assistance with high-quality electron microscope image acquisition, Dr. Jeonghyun Park for providing NCs, Dr. Mariano Calcabrini for assistance with the NMR study, and Prof. Jonathan De Roo for fruitful discussions. This work benefited from the use of the SasView application, originally developed under NSF award DMR-0520547. SasView contains code developed with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the SINE2020 project, grant agreement No. 654000.","OA_type":"hybrid","author":[{"orcid":"0000-0002-6962-8598","first_name":"Seungho","full_name":"Lee, Seungho","last_name":"Lee","id":"BB243B88-D767-11E9-B658-BC13E6697425"},{"id":"302BADF6-85FC-11EA-9E3B-B9493DDC885E","last_name":"Balazs","full_name":"Balazs, Daniel","first_name":"Daniel","orcid":"0000-0001-7597-043X"},{"id":"8aceb01b-8972-11ed-ae7b-d5fe53775add","last_name":"Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil","first_name":"Aiswarya","full_name":"Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil, Aiswarya"},{"id":"03a7e858-01b1-11ec-8b71-99ae6c4a05bc","last_name":"Horta","full_name":"Horta, Sharona","first_name":"Sharona"},{"orcid":"0000-0002-1307-5074","last_name":"Goodrich","full_name":"Goodrich, Carl Peter","first_name":"Carl Peter","id":"EB352CD2-F68A-11E9-89C5-A432E6697425"},{"last_name":"Engel","full_name":"Engel, Michael","first_name":"Michael"},{"full_name":"Cherniukh, Ihor","first_name":"Ihor","last_name":"Cherniukh","id":"d03b62b2-5976-11ef-a8d7-9525504b7895"},{"last_name":"Ibáñez","full_name":"Ibáñez, Maria","first_name":"Maria","id":"43C61214-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","orcid":"0000-0001-5013-2843"}],"OA_place":"publisher","citation":{"chicago":"Lee, Seungho, Daniel Balazs, Aiswarya Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil, Sharona Horta, Carl Peter Goodrich, Michael Engel, Ihor Cherniukh, and Maria Ibáñez. “Reaction Medium Asan Architect of Nanocrystal Superlattices.” <i>Journal of the AmericanChemical Society</i>. American Chemical Society, 2026. <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6c07859\">https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6c07859</a>.","ama":"Lee S, Balazs D, Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil A, et al. Reaction medium asan architect of nanocrystal superlattices. <i>Journal of the AmericanChemical Society</i>. 2026;148(29):31245-31252. doi:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6c07859\">10.1021/jacs.6c07859</a>","apa":"Lee, S., Balazs, D., Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil, A., Horta, S., Goodrich, C. P., Engel, M., … Ibáñez, M. (2026). Reaction medium asan architect of nanocrystal superlattices. <i>Journal of the AmericanChemical Society</i>. American Chemical Society. <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6c07859\">https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6c07859</a>","short":"S. Lee, D. Balazs, A. Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil, S. Horta, C.P. Goodrich, M. Engel, I. Cherniukh, M. Ibáñez, Journal of the AmericanChemical Society 148 (2026) 31245–31252.","mla":"Lee, Seungho, et al. “Reaction Medium Asan Architect of Nanocrystal Superlattices.” <i>Journal of the AmericanChemical Society</i>, vol. 148, no. 29, American Chemical Society, 2026, pp. 31245–52, doi:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6c07859\">10.1021/jacs.6c07859</a>.","ieee":"S. Lee <i>et al.</i>, “Reaction medium asan architect of nanocrystal superlattices,” <i>Journal of the AmericanChemical Society</i>, vol. 148, no. 29. American Chemical Society, pp. 31245–31252, 2026.","ista":"Lee S, Balazs D, Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil A, Horta S, Goodrich CP, Engel M, Cherniukh I, Ibáñez M. 2026. Reaction medium asan architect of nanocrystal superlattices. Journal of the AmericanChemical Society. 148(29), 31245–31252."},"volume":148,"title":"Reaction medium asan architect of nanocrystal superlattices","type":"journal_article","tmp":{"image":"/images/cc_by.png","name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0)","short":"CC BY (4.0)","legal_code_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode"},"oa_version":"Published Version","project":[{"name":"HighTE: The Werner Siemens Laboratory for the High Throughput Discovery of Semiconductors for Waste Heat Recovery","_id":"9B8F7476-BA93-11EA-9121-9846C619BF3A"}],"status":"public","page":"31245-31252","corr_author":"1","PlanS_conform":"1","intvolume":"       148","year":"2026","issue":"29","abstract":[{"text":"Nanocrystal superlattices are commonly formed by changing concentration, solvent conditions, or particle surface chemistry. Although effective, these approaches alter multiple contributions to the interparticle potential simultaneously, making it difficult to isolate the interactions responsible for ordering or to control assembly in chemically complex environments. Here, we show that oligomeric species present in a nanocrystal reaction medium drive superlattice formation through a depletion mechanism. Using PbTe nanocrystals as a model system, we identify Pb–oleate oligomers in the crude reaction mixture, characterize their solution structure, and quantify their contribution to the interparticle potential, establishing depletion as the dominant short-range interaction governing spontaneous body-centered cubic superlattice formation. We then confirm the depletion origin of ordering by showing that varying depletant concentration predictably shifts the order–disorder boundary and produces a thermally reversible transition between dispersed and ordered states ─ behavior that is inconsistent with van der Waals or ligand-mediated mechanisms but is a direct consequence of depletion control. Having established and validated the mechanism, we demonstrate that the same depletion framework can be deliberately activated in purified dispersions and transferred across nanocrystal systems of different composition and shape, including anisotropic and binary assemblies. These results establish precursor-derived depletion as a general and chemically grounded mechanism for nanocrystal superlattice formation, and show that collective ordering can be programmed through the surrounding medium rather than through particle surface modification.","lang":"eng"}],"file":[{"file_name":"2026_JACS_Lee.pdf","creator":"dernst","date_updated":"2026-08-04T06:40:17Z","date_created":"2026-08-04T06:40:17Z","file_size":6564594,"file_id":"22646","content_type":"application/pdf","checksum":"063314ae5ac4225ebd4436aa8707d113","success":1,"access_level":"open_access","relation":"main_file"}],"publisher":"American Chemical Society","external_id":{"pmid":["42532904"]},"quality_controlled":"1","oa":1,"pmid":1,"ddc":["540"],"user_id":"2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","date_published":"2026-07-15T00:00:00Z","supplementarymaterial":"yes","scopus_import":"1","date_created":"2026-08-04T06:29:31Z","das_tickbox":"0","article_processing_charge":"Yes (via OA deal)","file_date_updated":"2026-08-04T06:40:17Z"}]