Abstract
The emulsion-based self-assembly of nanoparticles into low-dimensional superparticles of hollow vesicle-like assemblies is reported. Evaporation of the oil phase at relatively low temperatures from nanoparticle-containing oil-in-water emulsion droplets leads to the formation of stable and uniform sub-micrometer vesicle-like assembly structures in water. This result is in contrast with those from many previously reported emulsion-based self-assembly methods, which produce solid spherical assemblies. It is found that extra surfactants in both the oil and water phases play a key role in stabilizing nanoscale emulsion droplets and capturing hollow assembly structures. Systematic investigation into what controls the morphology in emulsion self-assembly is carried out, and the approach is extended to fabricate more complex rattle-like structures and 2D plates. These results demonstrate that the emulsion-based assembly is not limited to typical thermodynamic spherical assembly structures and can be used to fabricate various types of interesting low-dimensional assembly structures.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 7791-7798 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Advanced Functional Materials |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 43 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 15 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:J.P. and D.R.H. contributed equally to this work. S.-J.P. acknowledges the financial support from the National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (NRF-2015R1A2A2A01003528) and the partial support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. S.J. acknowledges the financial support from the Korea Basic Science Institute grant (C36950).
Keywords
- emulsions
- hollow structures
- nanoparticles
- self-assembly
- surfactants