Ordered '3D-superlattice' oxide nanotubes with highly defined physical and selective chemical contrasts

在过去的几年里，申请人的实验室对自对准的二氧化钛纳米管阵列的电化学生长进行了深入的研究，并在合成和应用方面确立了该领域的世界领先地位。现在建议创建一种用于完全新颖的纳米管结构的工具箱，该工具箱允许预先设计的3D纳米尺度限制和管壁内的主动尺寸控制--特别是：1)形成高度限定的3D超晶格纳米管结构，以强烈地改变纳米管壁的物理性质；2)形成具有工程(特定部位)化学对比的纳米管结构，以允许化学体系结构和纳米通道流经反应器的空间、高度限定的(3D)锚定点。这些方法应该导致具有精确定义的性质的有序纳米管结构，这些性质可以在纳米管的长度上以纳米精度分配。管壁可以被(局部)修改为：-具有改变的离子、电或光学属性(带隙工程、介观材料)，并且纳米级异质结可以被构建到管壁中(基于太阳能电池结构、插入宿主、光催化或量子尺寸器件的靶向应用)。-具有空间受限的化学对比，其将创建一个平台来创建局部反应性并构建更多的分子结构，例如，用于处理具有相应维度的生物实体，以及用于包括纳米尺度流过(单光子)光反应器或光开关器件的化学特性。设想了将单纳米管开发为多功能平台的方法，该平台统一了位置选择性生物医学对接、磁引导和远程有效载荷释放特性。

Over the past few years, the electrochemical growth of self-aligned TiO2 nanotube arrays has been intensively studied in the laboratory of the applicant, and a world-leading position in this field has been established in synthesis and application. It is now proposed to create a toolbox for entirely novel nanotubular architectures that allow a pre-designed creation of 3D nanoscale confinement and active size control within the tube wall - in particular:1) the formation of highly defined 3D superlattice nanotube structures to strongly modify the physical properties such as the electrical/optical character of the nanotube wall;2) the formation of nanotube structures with engineered (site specific) chemical contrasts to allow spatially, highly defined, (3D) anchoring points for chemical architectures and nano-channel flowthrough reactors.The approaches should lead to ordered nanotube architectures with precisely defined properties that can be allocated with nanoscale precision over the length of the nanotube. Tube walls can be (locally) modified to:- possess altered ionic, electric, or optical properties (band-gap engineering, mesomaterials), and nanoscale heterojunctions can be built into the tube walls (targeting applications, based on solarcell structures, insertion hosts, photocatalysis, or quantum size devices).- have spatially confined chemical contrasts that will create a platform to create local reactivity and build further molecular architectures, for example, for the handling of biological entities with corresponding dimensions, and for chemical properties including nanoscale-flow through (single photon) photoreactors or photoswitchable devices. Approaches are envisaged to develop single nanotubes as multifunctional platform unifying site selective biomedical docking, magnetic guiding and remote payload release properties.