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Feature

Functional hybrid materials

26 May 2009
Amir Fahmi, Torsten Pietsch, Cesar Mendoza and Nicolas Cheval

Nanofabrication via self-assembly of hybrid materials into well-defined architectures is essential for the next generation of miniaturized devices. This paper describes our group's achievements towards the development of multifunctional nanostructures via self-assembly of hybrid systems based on the block copolymer PS-b-P4VP and inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) into 0D, 1D, 2D and complex 3D periodic nanostructures. The morphologies of these architectures are adjusted to gain functions via structural control at different dimensions.

Natural hybrid materials often possess complex, hierarchical architectures at sizes ranging from a few nanometers to several micro- to millimeters. Their collective properties are determined by the combination of both the structure and composition on each length scale. Hierarchical architectures of organic-inorganic hybrid materials are explicitly generated at different scales and with varying degrees of complexity by self-assembly of the soft source materials. Inspired by Nature, this concept can provide a simple, flexible and economical approach to fabricate multifunctional nanostructures for technological applications via self-assembly of functional hybrid materials. However, understanding the fundamental principles of self-assembled soft matter systems and applying this approach to a variety of combinations of organic-inorganic materials is a major challenge in current materials science and engineering.

 

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Nanotechnology