Synthesis of Hybrid Colloids Through the Growth of Polystyrene Latex Particles onto Methacryloxy methyl triethoxysilane - Functionalized Silica Particles

Abstract

AbstractOne area of particular effort recently is the use of colloidal particles as precursors in engineering new materials. Nevertheless, these particles are nearly always spheres. This places limitations on the structures that can be built, especially in making photonic-bandgap materials. Therefore, it is a great challenge to create new colloids with an original shape, i.e. different from the sphere, in a controllable manner.We present here an original approach to create hybrid organic-inorganic colloidal particles with a perfect controlled shape. The synthetic route of these structures, which are composed of spherical silica spheres surrounded by a varying number of polystyrene beads, consists in the emulsion polymerization of styrene in presence of silica particles, which had been surface-modified by a coupling agent containing polymerizable groups.The influence of the size of the silica particle and of the nature of the coupling agent on the resulting colloidal particles morphologies was carefully analyzed. We show in particular that the number of growing polystyrene beads varies homogeneously with the diameter of the mineral spheres. A main advantage of this technique is also that we can precisely control the reaction time, allowing us to tune the final morphology of the hybrid structures. These colloidal assemblies are original building blocks for the elaboration of new functional materials.