title: Nanocontainers made of various materials with tunable shape and size.
abstract: Nanocontainers have great potentials in targeted drug delivery and nanospace-confined reactions. However, the previous synthetic approaches exhibited limited control over the morphology, size and materials of the nanocontainers, which are crucial in practical applications. Here, we present a synthetic approach to multi-segment linear-shaped nanopores with pre-designed morphologies inside anodic aluminium oxide (AAO), by tailoring the anodizing duration after a rational increase of the applied anodizing voltage and the number of voltage increase during Al foil anodization. Then, we achieve nanocontainers with designed morphologies, such as nanofunnels, nanobottles, nano-separating-funnels and nanodroppers, with tunable sizes and diverse materials of carbon, silicon, germanium, hafnium oxide, silica and nickel/carbon magnetic composite, by depositing a thin layer of materials on the inner walls of the pre-designed AAO nanopores. The strategy has far-reaching implications in the designing and large-scale fabrication of nanocontainers, opening up new opportunities in nanotechnology applications.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Materials Physics, and Anhui Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials and Nanostructures, Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P. O. Box 1129, Hefei 230031, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xianglong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Guowen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Fangming
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Xiangdong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Bensong
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Qiaoling
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Xiaoguang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Zhaoqin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.forename: Mingguang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Huang