CO 2 switchable hollow nanospheres.

HYPOTHESIS: Hollow nanospheres, characterized by a cavity inside a solid shell, have potential applications due to their unique structure, but the unchangeable morphology and permeability of the shell restrain their further practical utilization. While several smart hollow nanospheres that can respond to pH, ion strength, and temperature have been developed, they are inclined to suffer from problems associated with high energy consumption or the difficult removal of residual stimulants. Thus, it is desirable to develop a novel and free-of-residual trigger stimulating mode.

EXPERIMENTS: In this work, CO2 is used to fabricate smart hollow nanospheres composed of crosslinked poly(diethylamino-ethyl methacrylate) (PDEAEMA) network from polystyrene (PS)/PDEAEMA core-shell nanospheres by a template-removal technique. The morphology evolution of the resultant nanospheres during the fabrication process was characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) and was visualized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

FINDINGS: Hollow nanospheres can be generated by experiencing a morphology change from a core nanosphere, core-shell, yolk-shell to a final hollow structure. The increase in shell-stiffness can restrain the collapse of hollow spheres. It is demonstrated that CO2 is easy to introduce and remove (via N2 input) without stimulation residues in this system. In addition, mild CO2 /N2 purging can only reversibly change the swelling/collapse of hollow particles; violent CO2 /N2 bubbling can reversibly regulate both the size and aggregation/re-dispersion state of the hollow nanospheres, which can be intuitively observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM).