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Orientationally Glassy Crystals of Janus Spheres

Colloidal Janus spheres in water (one hemisphere attractive and the other repulsive) assemble into two-dimensional hexagonal crystals with orientational order controlled by anisotropic interactions. We exploit the decoupled translational and rotational order to quantify the orientational dynamics. Via imaging experiments and Monte Carlo simulations we demonstrate that the correlations in the orientation of individual Janus spheres exhibit glasslike dynamics that can be controlled via the ionic strength. Thus, these colloidal building blocks provide a particularly suitable model glass system for elucidating nontrivial dynamics arising from directional interactions, not captured by the consideration of just translational order.