Assembly of spherical micelles in 2D physical confinements and their replication into mesoporous silica nanorods

The influence of 2D confinement of alumina nanochannels on the assembly of spherical micelles formed from block copolymers was investigated by analysing their replicas in mesoporous silica. It could be shown that spherical micelles follow assembly patterns similar to those of hard spheres under cylindrical confinement. Hereby, the dimensions of the confining channels are crucial in dictating the type of micellar assembly, but unlike for the hard sphere model they also determine the morphology of the micelles. Additionally, the structure of the resulting mesoporous silica rods is influenced by the concentration of polymer in the precursor solution. Only for a certain concentration are the resulting pores evenly distributed throughout the rods, while deviating to higher and lower concentrations resulted in opposite pore density gradients.