Breaking the symmetry of micro- and nanoobjects by bipolar electrochemistry

摘要

Janus particles are defined as micro- or nano- particles owning two sides of different chemistry [1]. It has been demonstrated that they can be used as key-components in applications such as catalysis [2], medical therapy [3], detection [4] or display technologies [5]. However, the synthesis of Janus particles is still challenging, and achieving a cost effective large-scale production remains an issu that slows down their industrial application. So far, a great majority of methods used to produce these particles breaks the symmetry by using a surface or interface [6]. This makes the preparation of large quantities rather difficult since those processes involve a 2D reaction space, and thus, lead only to monolayer equivalents of material. We demonstrated that it is possible to use the concept of bipolar electrochemistry to generate anisotropy on conductive particles in the bulk phase [7]. This technology allows tailoring the shape and the position of the deposited materials that can be either a metal, a polymer, an organic layer or even a semi conductor [8], [9], [10], [11], [12].