Fabrication of gold nanoparticles and silicon oxide corpuscles from block copolymers

Abstract

We have prepared silicon oxide corpuscles, gold dots inside a silicon oxide matrix, and silicon oxide dots from poly(2-vinylpyridine)-block-poly(dimethyl siloxane) block copolymer micelles, which were made using the preferential solvent for one of the block copolymer components. Three different spatial distributions of silicon oxide and gold nanoparticles can be obtained via the incorporation of the metal precursor into vinylpyridyl units and/or conversion of PDMS to silicon oxide. Controlling spatial distributions of inorganic nanostructured materials enables us to tune the surface plasmon bands.