Free-standing poly(2-vinylpyridine) foam films doped with silver nanoparticles formed at the planar liquid/liquid interface

Fabrication of composite thin films with microstructures of honeycomb, foam, and nanosphere arrays through adsorption and self-assembly of block copolymers at the liquid/liquid interface

“…Although the BE values are consistent with those of Ag(0) and these bands appear to be symmetric, it seems difficult to get such a conclusion that the doped Ag + ions are transformed to Ag atoms completely, because there is not enough nanoparticles in the image. It was demonstrated that Ag + ions are more difficult to be reduced than Au(III) during the assembly process at the liquid/liquid interface in our previously reports [25,31]. The relative weight content of silver in the composite was estimated to be 34.3% based on the TG curve shown in Fig.…”

“…5b. This is a new feature compared with the foam structure of P2VP/Au [24] and P2VP/Ag [25] systems formed at the liquid/liquid interface that are just composed of bigger microcapsules. The size of the nanocapsules is in the range of micellar dimension and close to the pore size of the honeycomb structure of PS-b-P4VP/Au (Fig.…”

“…Both sides of the layers consist of P4VP and PS blocks that face to water and organic phases, respectively. Similar to homopolymer P2VP [25,31], the small pieces self-assemble into microcapsules with the hydrophilic side as the outer face and the hydrophobic side as the inner face. Further formation of microcapsules with time leads to accumulate to construct foam films.…”

“…This may be related to the differences between the interactions of the inorganic species with the polymer molecules at the liquid/liquid interface, and the consequent different adsorption rates of polymer molecules and the self-organization behaviors. Various experimental conditions were tested when fabricating P2VP-based composite films at the liquid/liquid interfaces [25,31]. We found that AuCl À 4 =P2VP composite foam film was formed even the concentration of HAuCl 4 aqueous solution was as low as 1 Â 10 À4 M, while Ag + /P2VP composite films were formed only when the concentration of AgNO 3 aqueous solution reached to about 1 Â 10 À2 M. This reflects that AuCl À 4 ions are easy, but Ag + ions are difficult to combine with the polymer molecules under the experimental conditions.…”

“…Composite foam films of a homopolymer (poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP)) doped with noble metal nanoparticles and metal ions or complex ions have been fabricated by using this method in our recent work [24,25]. We found that the formation of these composite structures resulted from the adsorption, combination, and selfassembly of P2VP molecules and inorganic species at the liquid/liquid interface.…”