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Composite mesostructures by nano-confinement

Nature Materials volume 3, pages 816–822 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

In a physically confined environment, interfacial interactions, symmetry breaking, structural frustration and confinement-induced entropy loss can play dominant roles in determining molecular organization. Here we present a systematic study of the confined assembly of silica–surfactant composite mesostructures within cylindrical nanochannels of varying diameters. Using exactly the same precursors and reaction conditions that form the two-dimensional hexagonal SBA-15 mesostructured thin film, unprecedented silica mesostructures with chiral mesopores such as single- and double-helical geometries spontaneously form inside individual alumina nanochannels. On tightening the degree of confinement, a transition is observed in the mesopore morphology from a coiled cylindrical to a spherical cage-like geometry. Self-consistent field calculations carried out to account for the observed mesostructures accord well with experiment. The mesostructures produced by confined syntheses are useful as templates for fabricating highly ordered mesostructured nanowires and nanowire arrays.

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Figure 1: SEM images of PAA membrane and TEM images of free-standing mesoporous silica fibres and silver mesostructured nanowires.
Figure 2: TEM image simulation and comparison with actual images of concentric three-layer stacked-doughnuts structure.
Figure 3: Representative TEM images of mesostructures formed inside alumina nanochannels with differing confinement dimensions.
Figure 4
Figure 5: Schematic structural correlation between mesostructure formed on a flat substrate and that within a cylindrical confinement.
Figure 6: Simulated structures of the confined self-assembly in cylindrical confinement with varying cylinder diameter (D).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under award number DMR 01-20967 and award number DMR 02-33728, and partially supported by the MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation under award no. DMR 00-80034 and by an IBM Faculty Award. We thank R. C. Hayward and T. Livneh for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA

    Yiying Wu, Guosheng Cheng, Jianfang Wang, Martin Moskovits & Galen D. Stucky

  2. Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA

    Kirill Katsov, Jing Tang, Glenn H. Fredrickson & Galen D. Stucky

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA

    Scott W. Sides & Glenn H. Fredrickson

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  1. Yiying Wu
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Correspondence to Galen D. Stucky.

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Wu, Y., Cheng, G., Katsov, K. et al. Composite mesostructures by nano-confinement. Nature Mater 3, 816–822 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1230

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