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Water-soluble organo-silica hybrid nanowires

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 718–722 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

There has been growing interest in the past decade in one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures, such as nanowires, nanotubes or nanorods, owing to their size-dependent optical and electronic properties and their potential application as building blocks, interconnects and functional components for assembling nanodevices1,2. Significant progress has been made; however, the strict control of the distinctive geometry at extremely small size for 1D structures remains a great challenge in this field. The anisotropic nature of cylindrical polymer brushes has been applied to template 1D nanostructured materials, such as metal, semiconductor or magnetic nanowires3,4,5,6. Here, by constructing the cylindrical polymer brushes themselves with a precursor-containing monomer, we successfully synthesized hybrid nanowires with a silsesquioxane core and a shell made up from oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate units, which are soluble in water and many organic solvents. The length and diameter of these rigid wires are tunable by the degrees of polymerization of both the backbone and the side chain. They show lyotropic liquid-crystalline behaviour and can be pyrolysed to silica nanowires. This approach provides a route to the controlled fabrication of inorganic or hybrid silica nanostructures by living polymerization techniques.

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Figure 1: Synthesis of soluble organo-silica and inorganic silica nanowires.
Figure 2: Synthetic route to soluble organo-silica hybrid nanowires via ATRP using CuBr as catalyst and N,N,N′,N′′,N′′-pentamethyldiethylenetriamine (PMDETA) as ligand.
Figure 3: AFM height images on mica.
Figure 4: Electron microscopy characterization of soluble organo-silica hybrid nanowires.
Figure 5: Lyotropic liquid-crystalline phase of [(SiO1.5)20-b-OEGMA57]3,200 organo-silica hybrid nanowires.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant Mu896/22). We thank M. Drechsler, V. Olszowka, M. Hund, B. Goßler, C. Löffler, and J. Crassous for their help in TEM, AFM, SEM, TGA and polarized optical microscopy measurements. We also thank G. Lattermann for the helpful discussions on polarized optical microscopy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Makromolekulare Chemie II, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany

    Jiayin Yuan, Youyong Xu, Andreas Walther, Manuela Schumacher, Holger Schmalz & Axel H. E. Müller

  2. Physikalische Chemie I, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany

    Sreenath Bolisetty & Matthias Ballauff

  3. Bayreuther Institut für Kolloide und Grenzflächen, Universität Bayreuth, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany

    Matthias Ballauff & Axel H. E. Müller

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  1. Jiayin Yuan
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Correspondence to Axel H. E. Müller.

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Yuan, J., Xu, Y., Walther, A. et al. Water-soluble organo-silica hybrid nanowires. Nature Mater 7, 718–722 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2232

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