Synthesis And Fabrication Of Inorganic/Polymer Core/Shell Microspheres

Organic-inorganic materials have been attracting considerable attention for their importance in the fields of materials in the modern science and technologies, and a variety of synthetic routes have been developed in recent years. Organic-inorganic materials can be tailor-made with an infinite number of architectures and in diverse forms (monoliths, thin films, fibers, powders, or particles). Especially, inorganic/polymer core/shell colloidal particles with desired properties have recently been an important and hot point in the colloid sciences. A variety of core/shell colloids have been found a broad range of fascinating applications in fields of drug delivery, biodiagnostics and optoelectronic materials and so on. As an important aspect, the formation and utilization of highly ordered structures (photonic crystals and colloidal crystals) resulted from the self-assembly of monodispersed core/shell colloidal particles have been an intriguing subject of researches over the past several decades. On the other hand, a variety of organic or inorganic hollow microspheres were obtained from the inorganic/polymer core/shell colloids as templates at the micro- and nano-scale, hollow nanospheres and microspheres have increasingly attractive interests due to their potential applications in catalysis, controlleddelivery, artificial cells, light fillers, low dielectric constant materials, acoustic insulation and photonic crystals.In Chapter Two, monodispersed silica/polymer core/shell microspheres were synthesized via emulsion polymerization, we have investigated the effects of several reaction parameters on the structures, morphologies and sizes of silica/polymer core/shell microspheres. Hollow polymer or carbon microspheres were obtained via an etching process using a solvent or carbonization, and then the formation mechanism of SiCVpolymer core/shell microspheres was speculated. Successively, we fabricated colloids crystals of core/shells microspheres via a procedure of two-substrate vertical deposition and the SiCVpolymer core/shell microspheres were as building blocks. The structures of 3D ordered porous TiO₂ with SiO₂ microspheres inside were fabricated and colloids crystals of core/shells microspheres were used as templates. As we know, many kinds of functional particles can be doped into SiO₂ microspheres by sol-gel process. We believe that the preparation of monodispersed core/shell microspheres will provide a versatile platform to investigate functional colloids, and will be useful for preparing self-assembled colloidal crystals.In Chapter Three, we describe a further preparation of monodispersed inorganic/polymer core/shell microspheres with a function of optics or electronics based on our preparation method, and silica-CdTe and silica-Ag composite microspheres were used as cores. We characterized the morphology, structures and fluorescence of core/shell microspheres. The preparation of silica-CdTe/polymer and silica-Ag/polymer core/shell microspheres extended the method for preparing core/shell microspheres, and it was believed that this method is facile and useful to obtain monodispersed inorganic/organic core/shell...