Microemulsions as reaction media for the synthesis of Pt nanoparticles.

For the synthesis of Pt nanoparticles we used water-in-oil droplet microemulsions as templates. The focus was on the correlation between the size of the microemulsion droplets and that of the resulting Pt particles. To study this correlation in a systematic way, all particles were synthesized at the water emulsification failure boundaries where the microemulsion droplets are spherical and where their size can easily be tuned by the amount of added water. The metallic particles were synthesized by mixing two microemulsions one of which contains the metal salt H(2)PtCl(6) and the other the reducing agent NaBH(4). The size and structure of the microemulsion droplets was studied via small-angle X-ray scattering, while the Pt particles were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy in combination with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and selected area electron diffraction. The clear correlation between droplet and particle size was further supported by accompanying Monte Carlo simulations.

Structural transitions of encapsidated polyelectrolytes.

Conformations and structural transitions of polyelectrolytes strictly confined onto a spherical 2D surface have been investigated by scaling descriptions based on physical arguments concerning polyelectrolyte adsorption onto planar surface and liquid crystals as well as by Monte Carlo simulations using a bead-spring model with short-range and electrostatic repulsions. In case of the electrostatic screened regime, a disordered-ordered (spiral) transition at increasing persistence length of the chain was found. It was predicted that the transition occurred when the persistence length is comparable with the mean spacing between adjacent strands of the ordered chain. The presence of a non-screened electrostatic repulsion led to a more complex behavior with i) a re-entrant order-disorder transition and ii) a tennis ball texture as an additional smectic/nematic structure. The various competing structures given by the theory were recovered by the Monte Carlo simulations, which also indicated that the tennis ball texture was favored over the spiral structure by the long-range interactions for semi-flexible chains.