Organic/inorganic heterostructures templated by interfacial instability-driven BCP colloids in deformable emulsion droplets

Abstract

Hybrid heterostructure materials have received considerable attention due to the integration of each component and abundant functional applications in micromotor, catalyst, photothermal therapy, drug delivery, and bioimaging. However, the preparation of organic/inorganic heterostructure nanoparticles (HSNPs) with high quality still remains a remarkable challenge since thermodynamically metastable structures usually coexisted, resulting in the lack of organic scaffolds with extreme uniformity both in shape and size distribution. Here, we prepared polystyrene-block-poly (4-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) block copolymer (BCP) core-shell spherical colloids driven by interfacial instability of soft and deformable emulsion droplets. Ultra-low interfacial tension was achieved through the co-adsorption of BCP segments and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) surfactant, which had a strong affinity with P4VP segment at the interface of emulsified droplets. The excellent and homogeneous BCP colloids were further utilized as organic scaffolds to selectively grow functional SiO2 layer on the surface of BCP spherical colloids, producing the BCP/SiO2 HSNPs with highly uniform shape and size distribution originating from the PS-b-P4VP scaffolds, thus providing an efficient and general strategy to construct and design the organic/inorganic HSNPs with diverse applications.