title: Alkylated cage silsesquioxane forming a long-range straight ordered hierarchical lamellar nanostructure.
abstract: An alkylated cage silsesquioxane (1), targeting for a new class of bottom-up-type fabricating materials, was successfully synthesized, and its self-assembled structure is described and discussed herein. Through this, it was found that the intermolecular interaction of long alkyl chains of 1 could be manipulated by thermal annealing to form a long-range straight ordered hierarchical lamellar structure with a periodicity of around 5 nm. Subsequent transmission electron microscopy (TEM) clearly identified polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) molecules of 1 arranged in a highly ordered fashion, with a "head-to-head" type bilayered structure. The observation of a sublayer structure measuring approximately 0.4 nm in width was attributed to the highly regular packing of isobutyl groups in POSS molecules identified by TEM analysis. Moreover, the formation of a long-range straight structure with sharp interfacial boundaries, which is difficult to achieve with traditional diblock copolymers, is considered to be of significant importance to developing new practical applications of self-assembled nanostructures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology , Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yoshihito
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ishida
authors.forename: Rina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Maeda
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tokita
authors.forename: Shin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Horiuchi
authors.forename: Teruaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hayakawa
mesh_terms: D000478:Alkylation; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D017646:Organosilicon Compounds / Q000737:chemistry*; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D017646:Organosilicon Compounds; D011108:Polymers