Two Grapes Short of a Fruit Salad: Raspberry-, Strawberry-, and Seedpod-Like Organic Microspheres via Colloidal Nanotemplating

The morphology of surfaces critically influences their interaction with the surrounding phase. Herein, we report a modular approach for the synthesis of organic-inorganic raspberry-, strawberry-, and seedpod-like particles to template the porosity of superficially porous particles. Divinylbenzene (DVB) microspheres were employed as core particles, which were modified with polar and nonpolar polymer shells. Subsequently, silica nanoparticle templates were covalently tethered to said particles. Further grafting of polymer shells and subsequent template removal yielded superficially porous core-shell particles. In addition, we introduce a facile procedure for the synthesis of superficially porous particles without distinguishable core-shell morphology. Organic seedpod-like particles were prepared from DVB and silica templates, yielding superficially porous particles after template removal. The surface morphology of the templated particles was investigated via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was performed to prove the chemical modification of the particle surfaces.