Key-Lock Colloids in a Nematic Liquid Crystal

The Landau-de Gennes free energy is used to study theoretically the effective interaction of a spherical "key" and an anisotropic "lock" colloidal particles. We assume identical anchoring properties of the surfaces of the key and of the lock particles, and consider planar degenerate and perpendicular anchoring conditions separately. {The lock particle is modeled} as a spherical particle with a spherical dimple. When such a particle is introduced into a nematic liquid crystal, it orients its dimple at an oblique angle \(\theta_{eq}\) with respect to the far field director \({\bf n}_{\infty}\). This angle depends on the depth of the dimple. Minimization results show that the free energy of a pair of key and lock particles exhibits a global minimum for the configuration when the key particle is facing the dimple of the lock colloidal particle. The preferred orientation \(\phi_{eq}\) of the key-lock composite doublet relative to \({\bf n}_{\infty}\) is robust against thermal fluctuations. The preferred orientation \(\theta_{eq}^{(2)}\) of the dimple particle in the doublet is different from the isolated situation. {This is related to the "direct" interaction of defects accompanying the key particle with the edge of the dimple}. We propose that this nematic-amplified key-lock interaction can play an important role in self-organization and clustering of mixtures of colloidal particles with dimple colloids present.