two-step self-assembly and lyotropic liquid crystal behavior of tio2 nanorods两步自组装纳米二氧化钛和溶致液晶行为的作用.pdf

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Nanomaterials Volume 2012, Article ID 180989, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2012/180989 Research Article Two-Step Self-Assembly and Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Behavior of TiO2 Nanorods Zhimin Ren, Chao Chen, Rong Hu, Kaiguang Mai, Guodong Qian, and Zhiyu Wang State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China Correspondence should be addressed to Zhiyu Wang, wangzhiyu@ Received 17 April 2012; Revised 10 June 2012; Accepted 25 June 2012 Academic Editor: Tianxi Liu Copyright © 2012 Zhimin Ren et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Several self-assembly structures of anatase TiO2 nanorods were obtained by a two-step assembly process, and these structures formed different lyotropic liquid crystal in solution. Primary self-assembly occurred in synthesis process and formed two structures, in the morphology of ribbon and honeycomb, respectively. Secondary-assembly took place when the products were placed at lower temperature, where unique structures were obtained as the relative amount of ribbon and honeycomb changed with the increase of TiO2 concentration. These structures showed nematic, spherulites, and lamellar phases. The mechanism of the two-step self-assembly was clarified. The driving force of primary assembly is deduced to be anisotropic attractive force, for NRs can assemble at any concentrations, while gravity is the driving force of the secondary assembly. It is worth mentioning that this paper is the first report about spherulites composing of anatase TiO