Zhu You-Liang, Wang Dapeng, Guan Jun-Lei, Sun Zhao-Yan, Lu Zhongyuan
State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China.
State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, China.
Nanoscale. 2022 Mar 7;14(9):3554-3560. doi: 10.1039/d1nr06713c.
The nanoparticle (NP) surfactants generated by binding NPs and polymers can assemble into an elastic NP monolayer at the interface of two immiscible liquids, structuring the liquids. Janus NPs can be more strongly bound to the interface than the NP surfactants, but they are unable to structure liquids into complex shapes due to the difficulty of assembling the jamming arrays. By molecular dynamics simulations, we give an insight into the better performance of NP surfactants than Janus NPs on dynamically structuring liquids. The high energy binding of Janus NPs to the interface will drive the Janus NPs to assemble into micelles in binary liquids. The micelles are stabilized in one liquid by encapsulating a little of the other liquid, hindering interfacial adsorption when the interface is marginally extended upon liquid deformation. In contrast, the formed NP surfactants can rapidly fill the enlarged interfacial area to arrest the consecutive shape changes of the liquids. Moreover, NP surfactants can be designed with an appropriate coverage ratio (≤50%) of NP surface bearing host-guest sites to avoid dissolution and impart a desirable mechanical elasticity to their assembly.
通过将纳米颗粒（NP）与聚合物结合而产生的纳米颗粒表面活性剂可以在两种不混溶液体的界面处组装成弹性纳米颗粒单分子层，从而使液体结构化。与纳米颗粒表面活性剂相比，Janus纳米颗粒与界面的结合更强，但由于难以组装堵塞阵列，它们无法将液体构造成复杂的形状。通过分子动力学模拟，我们深入了解了纳米颗粒表面活性剂在动态构建液体方面比Janus纳米颗粒具有更好的性能。Janus纳米颗粒与界面的高能结合将驱动Janus纳米颗粒在二元液体中组装成胶束。通过包裹少量的另一种液体，胶束在一种液体中得以稳定，当液体变形时界面略微扩展时，这会阻碍界面吸附。相比之下，形成的纳米颗粒表面活性剂可以迅速填充扩大的界面区域，以阻止液体连续的形状变化。此外，可以设计纳米颗粒表面活性剂，使其带有主客体位点的纳米颗粒表面具有适当的覆盖率（≤50%），以避免溶解并赋予其组装体所需的机械弹性。
