Two Grapes Short of a Fruit Salad: Raspberry-, Strawberry-, and Seedpod-Like Organic Microspheres via Colloidal...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Surface Chemistry

Background:

• Surface morphology is crucial for particle-phase interactions.
• Developing methods for creating precisely structured porous materials is essential for various applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report a modular synthesis approach for templating the porosity of superficially porous particles.
• To create organic-inorganic raspberry-, strawberry-, and seedpod-like particles.
• To develop a facile procedure for synthesizing superficially porous particles without a distinct core-shell structure.

Main Methods:

• Utilized divinylbenzene (DVB) microspheres as core particles.
• Modified DVB microspheres with polymer shells and covalently tethered silica nanoparticle templates.
• Employed scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) for characterization.

Main Results:

• Successfully synthesized raspberry-, strawberry-, and seedpod-like particles using a modular approach.
• Created superficially porous core-shell particles through polymer grafting and template removal.
• Developed a method for superficially porous particles lacking a distinguishable core-shell morphology.

Conclusions:

• The reported modular approach enables the controlled synthesis of templated porous particles.
• The developed methods provide versatile routes to superficially porous materials with tunable morphologies.
• Characterization confirmed the successful modification and templating of particle surfaces.