Siliceous unilamellar vesicles and foams by using block-copolymer cooperative vesicle templating

  • Hongning Wang*
  • , Yunhua Wang
  • , Xufeng Zhou
  • , Liang Zhou
  • , Jiawei Tang
  • , Jie Lei
  • , Chengzhong Yu
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

97 Scopus citations

Abstract

By employing commercial poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO-PPO-PEO) block copolymers as templates in near-neutral aqueous solutions in the absence of organic cosolvents, unilamellar siliceous vesicles and nanofoams with ultrahigh pore volumes (>3 cm 3 g-1) are successfully synthesized. At controlled pH, a tubular micelle → unilamellar vesicle → nanofoam structural transformation is observed by increasing the reaction temperature. It is proposed that the siliceous vesicles are synthesized via a co-operative block-copolymer vesicle templating approach, while the siliceous nanofoams are obtained by the fusion of vesicles at increased ionic strength. Compared to literature methods to synthesize siliceous vesicles and foams, our method is convenient, cheap, and produces a high yield. Siliceous nanofoams synthesized by using our approach show superior bioimmobilization capacity over other porous materials for biomolecules with large molecular weight.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)613-617
Number of pages5
JournalAdvanced Functional Materials
Volume17
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 5 Mar 2007
Externally publishedYes

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