Professor Sung-Min Choi’s group demonstrated a highly ordered and highly aligned binary superlattice of 1D nano-objects for the first time. This work was published recently and highlighted as an inside back Cover Page of Angewandte Chemie International Edition which is a top journal in the field of general and applied chemistry. This work was also selected as ESRF HIGHLIGHTs 2014 (ESRF is the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility located in Grenoble, France). Synthesis of binary or multicomponent superstructures of nanoparticles, which may provide new emerging properties through synergetic collective coupling between different types of nanoparticles, are of great interests for various potential applications such as optical and electronic devices, sensing, and energy storage as well as its own scientific merit. While exciting progresses have been made for the fabrication of binary superlattices of spherical nanoparticles, systematic studies for synthesizing highly ordered binary superlattices of 1D nanoparticles have been very rare. In this study, highly ordered binary superlattice of 1D nano-objects are demonstrated for hydrophilically functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (p-SWNTs) and cylindrical surfactant micelles. Using small angle neutron and x-ray scattering (SANS & SAXS) techniques, Prof. Choi’s group showed that when p-SWNTs are added into a hexagonally packed cylindrical micellar system, p-SWNTs form a hexagonal array embedded in a honeycomb lattice of surfactant cylinders to maximize the free-volume entropies of both 1D nano-obejcts. The understanding obtained in this study provides new insights for designing new methods for synthesizing highly ordered binary superlattices of 1D nanoparticles (such as metallic, semiconducting, and magnetic nanorods which are of great current interests) with new synergetic functionalities. This work was mainly performed by Sung-Hwan Lim, a PhD student in Prof. Choi’s group, and Sung-Hwan’s presentation at the International Conference on Neutron Scattering (the top conference in neutron scattering science) held in Edinburgh, UK, received a Best Poster Award. The paper can be found through the link:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201403458/full