title: Fabrication of hierarchical CaCO3 mesoporous spheres: particle-mediated self-organization induced by biphase interfaces and SAMs.
abstract: Highly ordered hierarchical calcium carbonate is an important phase involved in calcification by a wide variety of invertebrate organisms, and its formation is of technological interest in the development of functional materials. In this article, porous CaCO(3) hierarchical microspheres with a hedgehoglike appearance have been fabricated on the flexible substrate under mild conditions. There are two points that play important roles in the regular organization of the terminal products: one is the biphase interfaces, which are generated by organic solvent n-hexane and an aqueous saturated solution of Ca(OH)(2), and the other is hydroxyl-terminated monolayers assembled on the flexible PET (poly(ethylene terephthalate)) substrate. The SEM images show that novel CaCO(3) hierarchical microspheres consist of densely stacked "shuttles" by the oriented self-organization of CaCO(3) nanoparticles. The IR and XRD spectra indicate that the as-synthesized products are composed of a calcite phase obtained by an ACC (amorphous calcium carbonate)-to-calcite transformation. In view of the results, a nanoparticle-mediated self-organization process induced by biphase interfaces and SAMs template is proposed for the integration of functional materials and nanodevices.
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049 China.
authors.forename: Xiaohong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Junhui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiang
authors.forename: Fushi
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xing
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Shiwei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D002119:Calcium Carbonate / Q000737:chemistry*; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D008863:Microspheres; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry; D011093:Polyethylene Terephthalates; D016062:Porosity; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D011093:Polyethylene Terephthalates; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; D002119:Calcium Carbonate