Soft templates block copolymers

Sol/Gel Chemistry with Block Copolymer Soft Templates. 156... 

Mesoporous carbon by soft template Carbons with mesostructures have been synthesized by using amphiphilic block copolymer as direct template, self-assembly surfactants or polyelectrolytes in the polymerization media of the carbon precursor. 

Soft template method by using block copolymers was reported for first time by Liang et al. [72] in 2004. After that, a significant progress on the fabrication of carbon with a well ordered mesopores was achieved [32, 73-77]. Zhao and coworkers performed a widespread study of soft template via the triblock poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) and poly(propylene oxide) (PPO) based systems, PEO-PPO-PEO [65, 78]. Several ordered pore stmctures corresponding to various surfactant liquid crystal phases were synthesized by liquid crystal template pathway, a schematized synthesis procedure is shown in the Pig. 7.11. 

The array of PPy dots (diameter 80-180 nm) was patterned in a parallel fashion using block copolymer micelle as a soft template [256]. The Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) film composed of PS-fi-poly(2-vinylpyridine) was deposited onto the solid substrate, and the ahgned PPy dots could be formed through the chemical oxidation polymerization of pyrrole in the presence of the block copolymer micelle template. The chemical differentiation (hydrophilic vs. hydrophobic) between the core and the corona in block copolymer micelle led to spatially-limited PPy growth. 

Block copolymers are interesting soft materials for use as templates of fiber systems, as they can contain channels that can be used for deposition methods, such as electrodeposition. A good example is that of channels in a polystyrene-6/oc -poly-4-vinylpyridine material mixed with a small organic molecule, which is held in the channels on thin film deposition. Washing out of the small molecule with methanol leaves channels that were filled with metallic nickel by electrodeposition. Interestingly,... 

One particular asset of structured self-assemblies is their ability to create nano- to microsized domains, snch as cavities, that could be exploited for chemical synthesis and catalysis. Many kinds of organized self-assemblies have been proved to act as efficient nanoreactors, and several chapters of this book discnss some of them such as small discrete supramolecular vessels (Chapter Reactivity In Nanoscale Vessels, Supramolecular Reactivity), dendrimers (Chapter Supramolecular Dendrlmer Chemistry, Soft Matter), or protein cages and virus capsids (Chapter Viruses as Self-Assembled Templates, Self-Processes). In this chapter, we focus on larger and softer self-assembled structures such as micelles, vesicles, liquid crystals (LCs), or gels, which are made of surfactants, block copolymers, or amphiphilic peptides. In addition, only the systems that present a high kinetic lability (i.e., dynamic) of their aggregated building blocks are considered more static objects such as most of polymersomes and molecularly imprinted polymers are discussed elsewhere (Chapters Assembly of Block Copolymers and Molecularly Imprinted Polymers, Soft Matter, respectively). Finally, for each of these dynamic systems, we describe their functional properties with respect to their potential for the promotion and catalysis of molecular and biomolecu-lar transformations, polymerization, self-replication, metal colloid formation, and mineralization processes. 

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