Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Template Method To Assemble Inorganic / Organic Nano Heterozygotes

Varying techniques for the templated fabrication of novel nanostructures have been developed in recent years. Among them the lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) with long-range structural order is a useful template used to assemble functional nanomaterials, because of its inherent tunablity and many other useful characteristics. In this paper, pre-fabricated inorganic nanoparticles are introduced selectively to aqueous or organic domains of lamellar phases built from different surfactants to obtain stable hybrids with novel properties. There are three main experimental studies included in this dissertation.In the first section, noble metal (Ag, Au), semiconductor (CdS) and magnetic (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticle (NPs) with different charges are prepared. We utilize different surfactant molecules as capping agent to fabricate negatively or positively charged particles, and tune the diameter and dispersion of NPs by changing capping agents' species and concentration. UV-visible spectrum and Transmission electronic microscopy are used to characterize products' morphology. Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) are adopted to respectively investigate NPs' surface properties. Under vigorous stirring circumstance, a certain amount of emulsifier and inorganic salts are added to the mixture of hydrosol and isooctane, then, nanoparticles capped with sodium oleate molecules are induced to transfer into organic solvents.In the second part, a lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) with long-range structural order built from AOT (sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate) / isooctane / water ternary system is employed as template to assemble diverse NPs (including negatively or positively charged metal and semiconductor NPs). The lamellar hybrid with different particles doped simultaneously into LLC's dissimilar meso-region is realized, through tuning template's structure and particles' surface properties. The stability of the hybrid systems is discussed with regard to size compatibility,...