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  • Review Article
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Single-micelle-directed synthesis of mesoporous materials

Abstract

Functional mesoporous materials with multilevel architectures, ranging from 0D to 3D, are typically prepared using surfactant-templating methods. In these methods, surfactants first form single micelles or aggregated micelles, which then assemble with precursors or oligomers to form ordered mesostructures on interfaces. In this Review, we outline the preparation of single-micelle architectures and the single-micelle-directed synthesis of mesoporous materials, including low-dimensional and 3D mesostructures, as well as hierarchical and asymmetric mesostructures directed by the single-micelle assembly. A range of architectures have been prepared via single-micelle assembly, for example, single-micelle porous liquids, single-layered mesoporous nanosheets, single-crystal mesoporous nanoparticles and Janus mesoporous nanocomposites. Using microscopic techniques such as cryo-electron microscopy, single micelles can now be directly observed. Such techniques improve our understanding of the formation processes of the single micelles, the assemblies of micelles and, as a result, the ordered mesoporous materials. The limitations of multilevel, functional mesoporous materials created by single-micelle assembly and future research directions are also discussed.

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Fig. 1: Single-micelle-directed fabrication of ordered mesoporous materials with multilevel architectures.
Fig. 2: Single-micelle-based nanostructures.
Fig. 3: 2D mesoporous materials.
Fig. 4: 3D mesoporous nanoparticles.
Fig. 5: Asymmetric mesoporous nanoparticles.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 21733003, 21875043, 21701027), Key Basic Research Program of the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (17JC1400100), China National Key Basic Research Program (973 Project) (2018YFA0209400, 2017YFA0207303), Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (18ZR1404600) and Shanghai Sailing Program (17YF1401000). This work was supported by Qatar University under High Impact-Fund Program Grant (QUHI-CAS-19/20-1).

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Zhao, T., Elzatahry, A., Li, X. et al. Single-micelle-directed synthesis of mesoporous materials. Nat Rev Mater 4, 775–791 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-019-0144-x

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