Hierarchical Colloidosomes with a Highly Ordered and Oriented Arrangement of Gold Nanorods via Confined Assembly at the Emulsion Interface

Self-assembly of gold nanorods (AuNRs) into hierarchically ordered superstructures is a prerequisite for the fabrication of functional materials and devices. Although 1D linear and 2D sheetlike ordered arrays of AuNRs have been successfully constructed, organizing AuNRs into ordered arrays on 3D spherical surfaces is still quite challenging because of the difficulty in controlling the orientation of anisotropic AuNRs on curved surfaces. Here, a facile yet robust emulsion interface self-assembly strategy is reported to obtain well-defined colloidosomes with highly ordered and oriented AuNRs through the self-assembly of polymer-tethered AuNRs at the emulsion interface, which is constructed with an external aqueous solution and an internal nonsolvent (hexadecane) as a liquid-core template. Moreover, the alignment and orientation of AuNRs can be controlled by varying the curvature of the colloidosome, the length of the AuNRs, and the molecular weight of the polymer ligands. This strategy provides a promising route to the design of hierarchical superstructures with a controlled AuNR arrangement and orientation.