Abstract
We have synthesized silver nanoparticles in the non-polar phase of non-aqueous microemulsions. The nanocrystals have been grown by reducing silver ions in the microemulsion cylindrical micelles formed by the reducing agent (ethylene glycol). By a careful deposit of the microemulsion phase on a substrate, the micelles align in a hexagonal geometry, thus forming a 2D array of parallel strings of individual silver nanoparticles on the substrate. The microemulsions are the ternary system of anionic surfactant, non-polar solvent (isooctane), and solvent polar (ethylene glycol); the size of synthesized nanoparticles is about 7 nm and they are monodisperse. The study of the microstructure was realized by transmission electron microscopy, high-resolution technique transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), and Fourier processing using the software Digital Micrograph for the determination of the crystalline structure of the HR-TEM images of the nanocrystals; chemical composition was determined using the energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Addition technique polarizing light microscopy allowed the observation of the hexagonal phase of the system. This method of synthesis and self-alignment could be useful for the preparation of patterned materials at the nanometer scale.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-015-0804-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Some of the desired nanostructures are monolayers, linear strings, crystal arrays, branched patterns, etc. Some of these arrays can be obtained by methods such as biomolecular nanolithography [2], scanning probe microscopy lithography coupled with surface modification of the substrate [3,4], magnetic sorting [5], dewetting [6,24], or drying of liquid droplets [7,25]; in some cases, the particles lie inside nanostructures such as those formed by block copolymers [8,9,10,11] or a polymer thin film matrix [12,13]
The main difference with our approach is that we confine the Ag+ ions in narrow cylindrical channels, which are obtained by microemulsifying ethylene glycol with isooctane; the microemulsions have been stabilized with an anionic surfactant: dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (AOT)
The non-aqueous microemulsion system obtained by the autoassembly of anionic surfactant (AOT), non-polar solvent isooctane, and polar solvent ethylene glycol promote the formation of inverses microemulsions; the nonpolar solvent is in the highest proportion
Summary
One of the main goals of nanotechnology is to devise methods for preparing nanoparticles of different materials as well as structured arrays at the nanoscale [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23]. Some of the desired nanostructures are monolayers, linear strings, crystal arrays, branched patterns, etc. Some of these arrays can be obtained by methods such as biomolecular nanolithography [2], scanning probe microscopy lithography coupled with surface modification of the substrate [3,4], magnetic sorting [5], dewetting [6,24], or drying of liquid droplets [7,25]; in some cases, the particles lie inside nanostructures such as those formed by block copolymers [8,9,10,11] or a polymer thin film matrix [12,13]. The main difference with our approach is that we confine the Ag+ ions in narrow cylindrical channels, which are obtained by microemulsifying ethylene glycol with isooctane; the microemulsions have been stabilized with an anionic surfactant: dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (AOT)
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