One-Pot Self-Assembly of Sequence-Controlled Mesoporous Heterostructures via Structure-Directing Agents

Multimaterial heterostructures have led to characteristics surpassing the individual components. Nature controls the architecture and placement of multiple materials through biomineralization of nanoparticles (NPs); however, synthetic heterostructure formation remains limited and generally departs from the elegance of self-assembly. Here, a class of block polymer structure-directing agents (SDAs) are developed containing repeat units capable of persistent (covalent) NP interactions that enable the direct fabrication of nanoscale porous heterostructures, where a single material is localized at the pore surface as a continuous layer. This SDA binding motif (design rule 1) enables sequence-controlled heterostructures, where the composition profile and interfaces correspond to the synthetic addition order. This approach is generalized with 5 material sequences using an SDA with only persistent SDA-NP interactions (“P-NP₁-NP₂”; NP_i = TiO₂, Nb₂O₅, ZrO₂). Expanding these polymer SDA design guidelines, it is shown that the combination of both persistent and dynamic (noncovalent) SDA-NP interactions (“PD-NP₁-NP₂”) improves the production of uniform interconnected porosity (design rule 2). The resulting competitive binding between two segments of the SDA (P- vs D-) requires additional time for the first NP type (NP₁) to reach and covalently attach to the SDA (design rule 3). The combination of these three design rules enables the direct self-assembly of heterostructures that localize a single material at the pore surface while preserving continuous porosity.