Nanorods of Well-Defined Length and Monodisperse Cross-Section Obtained from Electrostatic Complexation of Nanoparticles with a Semiflexible Biopolymer

Li Shi (1, 2) , Florent Carn (2) , François Boué (1) , Gervaise Mosser (3) , Eric Buhler (2)

1 LLB - UMR 12 - Laboratoire Léon Brillouin
2 MSC - Matière et Systèmes Complexes
3 LCMCP (site Paris VI) - Laboratoire de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Paris (site Paris VI)

We show by combining small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM) that anionic silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) assemble into well-defined 1D cluster when mixed with a dilute solution of semiflexible chitosan polycation. The nanorods are stable in excess of SiNPs and composed of 10 SiNPs well-ordered into straight single strands with length Lrod ≈ 184.0 nm and radius Rrod = 9.2 nm = RSiNPs. We point out that the ratio between the chitosan persistence length and the SiNP radius, which is here equal to 1, can be the determining condition to obtain such original objects.

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]

Li Shi, Florent Carn, François Boué, Gervaise Mosser, Eric Buhler. Nanorods of Well-Defined Length and Monodisperse Cross-Section Obtained from Electrostatic Complexation of Nanoparticles with a Semiflexible Biopolymer. ACS Macro Letters, 2012, 1 (3), pp.857-861. ⟨10.1021/mz300200y⟩. ⟨hal-00743826⟩