We began our experiments with mixtures of equally sized Au•MUA and Au•TMA. The pH was adjusted to 11 to ensure complete deprotonation of MUA's terminal COOH groups. Upon mixing aqueous solutions of these two types of NPs, we observed the rapid formation of an amorphous precipitate (stage 1 in Fig. ). We hypothesized that ordered assemblies of these superionic NPs could be obtained by gradually increasing the strength of electrostatic interactions (Fig. ). To this end, we first established that the Coulombic interactions between Au•MUA and Au•TMA could be screened-and their aggregates disassembled-upon adding concentrated solutions of simple inorganic salts. Among the many salts that successfully disassembled the Au•MUA/Au•TMA aggregates, we focused on ammonium carbonate, which has the unique ability to spontaneously decompose into gaseous products, according to the reaction equation,