Dynamic Self-Assembly of Homogenous Microcyclic Structures Controlled by a Silver-Coated Nanopore

作者:Gao, Rui; Lin, Yao; Ying, Yi-Lun*; Liu, Xiao-Yuan; Shi, Xin; Hu, Yong-Xu; Long, Yi-Tao*; Tian, He
来源:Small, 2017, 13(25): 1700234.
DOI:10.1002/smll.201700234

摘要

The self-assembly of nanoparticles is a challenging process for organizing precise structures with complicated and ingenious structures. In the past decades, a simple, high-efficiency, and reproducible self-assembly method from nanoscale to microscale has been pursued because of the promising and extensive application prospects in bioanalysis, catalysis, photonics, and energy storage. However, microscale self-assembly still faces big challenges including improving the stability and homogeneity as well as pursuing new assembly methods and templates for the uniform self-assembly. To address these obstacles, here, a novel silver-coated nanopore is developed which serves as a template for electrochemically generating microcyclic structures of gold nanoparticles at micrometers with highly homogenous size and remarkable reproducibility. Nanopore-induced microcyclic structures are further applied to visualize the diffusion profile of ionic flux. Based on this novel strategy, a nanopore could potentially facilitate the delivery of assembled structures for many practical applications including drug delivery, cellular detection, catalysis, and plasmonic sensing.