Gabriel J C, Camerel F, Lemaire B J, Desvaux H, Davidson P, Batail P
Sciences Moléculaires aux Interfaces, FRE 2068 CNRS, 2 rue de Houssinière, BP 32229, F-44322 Nantes Cedex 3, France.
Nature. 2001 Oct 4;413(6855):504-8. doi: 10.1038/35097046.
Ordering particles at the nanometre length scale is a challenging and active research area in materials science. Several approaches have so far been developed, ranging from the manipulation of individual particles to the exploitation of self-assembly in colloids. Nanometre-scale ordering is well known to appear spontaneously when anisotropic organic moieties form liquid-crystalline phases; this behaviour is also observed for anisotropic mineral nanoparticles resulting in the formation of nematic, smectic and hexagonal mesophases. Here we describe a lyotropic liquid-crystalline lamellar phase comprising an aqueous dispersion of planar solid-like sheets in which all the atoms involved in a layer are covalently bonded. The spacing of these phosphatoantimonate single layers can be increased 100-fold, resulting in one-dimensional structures whose periodicity can be tuned from 1.5 to 225 nanometres. These highly organized materials can be mechanically or magnetically aligned over large pH and temperature ranges, and this property can be used to measure residual dipolar couplings for the structure determination of biomolecules by liquid-state NMR. We also expect that our approach will result in the discovery of other classes of mineral lyotropic lamellar phases.
在纳米长度尺度上对粒子进行有序排列是材料科学中一个具有挑战性且活跃的研究领域。到目前为止，已经开发了几种方法，从单个粒子的操纵到胶体中自组装的利用。众所周知，当各向异性有机部分形成液晶相时，纳米尺度的有序排列会自发出现；对于各向异性矿物纳米粒子也观察到这种行为，导致向列相、近晶相和六方中间相的形成。在这里，我们描述了一种溶致液晶层状相，它由平面固体状薄片的水分散体组成，其中一层中涉及的所有原子都是共价键合的。这些磷酸锑酸盐单层的间距可以增加100倍，从而形成一维结构，其周期性可以从1.5纳米调整到225纳米。这些高度有序的材料可以在较大的pH值和温度范围内进行机械或磁取向，并且这种特性可用于通过液态核磁共振测量残余偶极耦合，以确定生物分子的结构。我们还期望我们的方法将导致发现其他类别的矿物溶致层状相。
