Annuaire
Surface chemical engineering in confined space
Surface Chemical Engineering is developed in our team mostly in the confined space of mesoporous structured silica presenting very well defined size of pores in the range 2 to 100 nm. The challenge is the control of the vicinity of the function. For that prupose we have developped an original technique based on the so-called molecular stencil patterning (MSP) using ammonium ions electrostatically retained on a silica surface as masking agent. These ions in self-electrostatic repulsion one to another maintain depending on their density a more or less dense regular coverage of the surface. This masking pattern is kept during the functionnalization of the surface using organosilane to hydrophobize partially the surface by reaction with the surface silanols groups.