Facile preparation of curved polymer composite nanosheets

A facile no-template approach for fabricating curved polystyrene (PS) nanosheets by miniemulsion polymerization technique was developed. Two essences of the high hydrophobicity of oil phase and the existence of cross-linking comonomer were found to ensure the stable curved sheet-like morphology. Here, when choosing tetradecane as the hydrophobic oil phase and divinylbenzene as cross-linker, the curved PS nanosheets with stable structure were obtained. Furthermore, after introducing functional groups by sulfonation reaction, these curved PS nanosheets can be used as a general template for preparing curved sheet-like inorganic/organic nanocomposites with broadly varied inorganic ingredients, such as metal Ag nanoparticles, inorganic titania, silica, etc. Otherwise, when calcining or carbonizing these inorganic/organic nanocomposites under air or nitrogen, novel mesoporous or microporous pure inorganic nanomaterials with curved sheet-like morphology were obtained conveniently further.