Rectangular shape crystal growth of alkyltrialkoxysilane based nano-particles through self assembly process

초록

In recent years, the design and fabrication of well controlled superstructure have attracted much attention in nanomaterials research because the geometric shape and size distribution are very important to particular applications such as catalysis, nanofiller, and coating. Several approaches such template directed synthesis and synthesis in confined space have been developed to synthesize 3 dimensional non spherical structures. Here, we have prepared 3 dimensional, well ordered, rectangular shape crystals by self assembly process of nano-sized organosilica particles and investigated the formation mechanism using Electron Microscopies. Upon addition to a basic alcohol solution, alkyltrialkoxysilanes are precipitated as nano-particles as a result of typical sol-gel process. With the controlled aging, the rectangular shape crystals could be prepared through the self assembly process of alkylsilane based nano-particles. The conversion of nano-particles to a 3 dimensional structure contained 1) 1 dimensional chain formation, 2) the bundle formation of 1 dimensional chains, and finally 3) the rectangular shape crystal formation. The spectroscopic data such as FT-IR and FT-NMR revealed that only T3 structures were the main building units.