Monodisperse Nanocrystals Crafted by Capitalizing on Amphiphilic Nonlinear Block Copolymers as Nanoreactors for Energy Applications

摘要

Nanocrystals exhibit a wide range of unique properties (e.g., electrical, optical, and optoelectronic) that depend sensitively on their size and shape, and are of both fundamental and practical interest. Breakthrough strategies that will facilitate the design and synthesis of a large diversity of nanocrystals with different properties and controllable size and shape in a simple and convenient manner are of key importance in revolutionarily advancing the use of nanocrystals for a myriad of applications in lightweight structural materials, optics, electronics, photonics, optoelctronics, magnetic technologies, sensory materials and devices, catalysis, drug delivery, biotechnology, and among other emerging fields.1-3 Herein, we report a general strategy for crafting a large variety of functional nanocrystals with precisely controlled dimensions (i.e., plain, core/shell, and hollow nanoparticles) for use in energy-related applications (i.e., solar cells and photocatalysis) by capitalizing on a new class of unimolecular star-like block copolymers as nanoreactors. This strategy is effective and able to produce organic solvent-soluble and water-soluble monodisperse nanoparticles, including metallic, ferroelectric, magnetic, luminescent, semiconductor, and their core/shell nanoparticles, which represent a few examples of the kind of nanoparticles that can be produced using this technique.4 We believe these nanoparticles can be utilized as building blocks or additives for bottom-up nanofabrication to develop low-cost nanoscale materials and devices with integrated functionalities enabled by the properties of individual nanoparticles and their proper spatial arrangement, and can also serve as model systems for fundamental research in self-assembly, phase behavior and crystallization kinetics of nanoparticles.5-7