Amphiphilic ABC triblock terpolymer templating for mesoporous silica

Self-assembled triblock terpolymers have attracted intense attention in recent years because of their abundant variety of assembly mesostructure. We reported the synthesis of mesoporous silica materials with the amphiphilic ABC triblock terpolymer polyethylene-poly(ethylene oxide)-polycaprolactone(PE-PEO-PCL) as a template and tetraethoxysilane(TEOS) as a silica source. Increasing the hydrophilic head group(PEO) led to the decrease of packing parameter g, which gave rise to the mesophase transformation from a cylindrical two-dimensional hexagonal P6mm structure to a cage-type face centered cubic closed-packing mesostructure. This new templating route provided a new insight into the template factor governed inorganic-organic self-assembly mesophases.