General Route to Metal-Silica-Block Copolymer Mesostructured Hybrids with High Metal Loadings

摘要

A vast range of mesostructures has been synthesized by mixing silica with block copolymers. For most applications, chemical functionality must be added to the silica, since the silica is inert under most conditions. In many cases, metals have been added to the silica mesostructure in a post-processing step, which involves washing the silica with metal ions and following with a second heat treatment to generate nanoparticles. In addition to increasing the cost and processing time for these materials, the amount of metal taken up by these systems is limited by the amount of metal ions that adsorb onto the silica. Here, we present a sol-gel based method that allows direct incorporation of many metals into block copolymer-silica hybrids in exceptionally high loadings. Furthermore, this route allows biological functionality to be built into the hybrids, further opening a range of new applications for mesostructured block copolymer hybrids.