Ghost-Template-Faceted Synthesis of Tunable Amorphous Hollow Silica Nanostructures and Their Ordered Mesoscale Assembly.

Abstract

Despite the enormous applications of and fundamental scientific interest in amorphous hollow-silica nanostructures (<i>h-</i><b>SiNS</b>s), their synthesis in crystal-like nonspherical polygonal architectures is challenging. Herein, we present a facile one-shot synthetic procedure for various unconventional <i>h-</i><b>SiNS</b>s with controllable surface curvatures (concave, convex, or angular), symmetries (spherical, polygonal, or Janus), and interior architectures (open or closed walls) by the addition of a metal salt and implementing kinetic handles of silica precursor (silanes/ammonia) concentrations and reverse-micellar volume. During the silica growth, we identified the key role of transiently <i>in situ</i> crystallized metal coordination complexes as a nanopolyhedral "ghost template", which provides facet-selective interactions with amino-silica monomers and guides the differential silica growth that produces different <i>h-</i><b>SiNS</b>s. Additionally, crystal-like well-defined polygonal <i>h-</i><b>SiNS</b>s with flat surfaces, assembled as highly ordered close-packed octahedral mesoscale materials (ca. 3 μm) where <i>h-</i><b>SiNS</b>s with different nanoarchitectures act as building units (ca. 150 nm) to construct customizable cavities and nanospaces, differ from conventionally assembled materials.