Stefik group, in collaboration with Tang group, at the University of South Carolina have expanded the capabilities of block polymer templates to include the direct self-assembly of inorganic heterostructures. Such combinations of multiple materials in specific sequences are fundamental to the operation of many devices including solar cells, rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, and fuel cells. To date, the fabrication methods based on block polymer templates have been limited to the production of porous materials with either a single composition or a random mixture of materials. Nature, on the other hand, controls the architecture and placement of multiple materials through biomineralization. Thus most synthetic heterostructures depart from the elegance of self-assembly. The USC team set out to bring new capabilities to self-assembly toolkits which led to the work being featured on the cover of ACS Nano.

In brief, the developed polymer templates included regions with weak binding sites and separate regions with strong binding sites for inorganic nanoparticles. The outcome of this strategy is that the first material added will irreversibly attach to the strong binding sites whereas subsequent material added will associate only with the remaining weak binding sites. Thus the sequence of nanoparticle materials added enables modular programming of the resulting material sequence.

Larison, T.; Williams, E. R.; Wright, M.; Tengco, J.; Boebinger, M. G.; Tang, C.; Stefik, M. One-Pot Synthesis of Sequence-Controlled Mesoporous Heterostructures. ACS Nano 2024, 18(31), 20133-20141.