Tuning the self-assembly of surfactants by the confinement of carbon nanotube arrays: a cornucopia of lamellar phase variants

Abstract

Tuning the self-assembly of building blocks to obtain a kaleidoscope of nanostructures is very important and challenging for the preparation of advanced nanomaterials. Amphiphiles confined within carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays can self-assemble into complex structures that maintain the “bilayer” characteristic of a lamellar phase, we call them “lamellar phase variants (LPVs)”. In this work, we carried out coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) studies to uncover novel LPVs. By varying the pattern of a CNT array, we obtained the “bilayer tube (BT) series”, which contains circular, hexagonal, octagonal, and elliptical nanotubes. Furthermore, by introducing dislocation to CNT arrays, we obtained the “bilayer scroll (BS) series” that contains polymorphic nano-scrolls. These nanostructures are very novel and intriguing. To gain insights into the formation of LPVs, we studied the morphology evolution, which was demonstrated to be an unfamiliar “successive self-assembly process”. These unusual self-assembling nanostructures and the formation process could provide clues for further studies on tuning the self-assembly of building blocks. The strategies developed in this work to obtain novel nanostructures are expected to facilitate the design and fabrication of nano-devices.