Solvent-pair surfactants enabled assembly of clusters and copolymers towards programmed mesoporous metal oxides

Authors：Xie, Wenhe; Ren, Yuan; Jiang, Fengluan; Huang, Xin-Yu; Yu, Bingjie; Liu, Jianhong; Li, Jichun; Chen, Keyu; Zou, Yidong; Hu, Bingwen; Deng, Yonghui^*

Source：Nature Communications, 2023, 14(1): 8493.

DOI：10.1038/s41467-023-44193-z

• PHOTOCATALYTIC ACTIVITY
• DESIGN
• N,N-DIMETHYLFORMAMIDE
• FORCE

Organic-inorganic molecular assembly has led to numerous nano/mesostructured materials with fantastic properties, but it is dependent on and limited to the direct interaction between host organic structure-directing molecules and guest inorganic species. Here, we report a "solvent-pair surfactants" enabled assembly (SPEA) method to achieve a general synthesis of mesostructured materials requiring no direct host-guest interaction. Taking the synthesis of mesoporous metal oxides as an example, the dimethylformamide/water solvent pairs behave as surfactants and induce the formation of mesostructured polyoxometalates/copolymers nanocomposites, which can be converted into metal oxides. This SPEA method enables the synthesis of functional ordered mesoporous metal oxides with different pore sizes, structures, compositions and tailored pore-wall microenvironments that are difficult to access via conventional direct organic-inorganic assembly. Typically, nitrogen-doped mesoporous epsilon-WO3 with high specific surface area, uniform mesopores and stable framework is obtained and exhibits great application potentials such as gas sensing. @@@ A solvent-pair surfactants enabled assembly method is developed to achieve a general and programmable synthesis of mesoporous metal oxides via the association of POMs with block copolymers through indirect interaction.

• Institution
  复旦大学; 中国科学院