Gao, W, Rigout, M orcid.org/0000-0002-4894-7768 and Owens, H (2016) Facile control of silica nanoparticles using a novel solvent varying method for the fabrication of artificial opal photonic crystals. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 18 (12). 387. ISSN 1388-0764
Abstract
In this work, the Stöber process was applied to produce uniform silica nanoparticles (SNPs) in the meso-scale size range. The novel aspect of this work was to control the produced silica particle size by only varying the volume of the solvent ethanol used, whilst fixing the other reaction conditions. Using this one-step Stöber-based solvent varying (SV) method, seven batches of SNPs with target diameters ranging from 70 to 400 nm were repeatedly reproduced, and the size distribution in terms of the polydispersity index (PDI) was well maintained (within 0.1). An exponential equation was used to fit the relationship between the particle diameter and ethanol volume. This equation allows the prediction of the amount of ethanol required in order to produce particles of any target diameter within this size range. In addition, it was found that the reaction was completed in approximately 2 h for all batches regardless of the volume of ethanol. Structurally coloured artificial opal photonic crystals (PCs) were fabricated from the prepared SNPs by self-assembly under gravity sedimentation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Silica nanoparticles; Solvent varying method; Artificial opals; Photonic crystals; Stöber method; Colloids |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Design (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 16 Mar 2017 11:37 |
Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2020 12:03 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11051-016-3691-8 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:113669 |