Exploration of selective decoration of Janus silica particles within polymeric patterned pore arrays

Abstract

Janus particles, especially amphiphilic ones, are known to be highly active when involved in interfacial self-assembly processes. However, experimental reports on employing Janus particles as an interfacial stabilizer to establish functional structures are rather limited. In this paper, amphiphilic Janus silica particles were prepared by selective chemical treatment on the particle “colloidosomes”. Different ways (decoration of Au nanoparticles, interfacial adsorption test) were used to confirm the acquirement of the Janus character of the particles. Upon successful synthesis of amphiphilic Janus particles, they were employed in the breath figures method for the first time. It turned out that by using the Janus particles, a regularly arranged pore array could be easily obtained. Characterization of the morphology of the patterned structure shows that Janus particles were densely located on the interior wall of the entire holes, forming finer particle arrays compared to the case of isotropic particles. The result indicates that Janus particles show optimized behavior when they are involved in the interfacial self-assembly processes. With further work, by choosing Janus particles with functional features, selective functionalization of porous films could be achieved with high efficiency and great ease using this method.