Individualized silica nanohelices and nanotubes: tuning inorganic nanostructures using lipidic self-assemblies

Diverse chiral nanometric ribbons and tubules formed by self-assembly of organic amphiphilic molecules could be transcribed to inorganic nanostructures using a novel sol-gel transcription protocol with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) in the absence of catalyst or cosolvent. By controlling parameters such as temperature or the concentration of the different reactants, we could finely tune the morphology of the inorganic nanostructures formed from organic templates. This fine-tuning has also been achieved upon controlling the kinetics of both organic assembly formation and inorganic polycondensation. The results presented herein show that the dynamic and versatile nature of the organic gels considerably enhances the tunability of inorganic materials with rich polymorphisms.