Novel polymer-free iridescent lamellar hydrogel for two-dimensional confined growth of ultrathin gold membranes

摘要: Hydrogels are generally thought to be formed by nano- micrometre-scale fibres or polymer chains, either physically branched entangled with each other trap water. Although there also anisotropic hydrogels apparently ordered structures, they essentially fibre/discrete chains-based network without exception. Here we present a type of polymer-free lamellar composed 100-nm-thick water layers sandwiched two bilayer membranes self-assembled nonionic surfactant, hexadecylglyceryl maleate. The appear iridescent as result Bragg's reflection visible light from the periodic plane. particular hydrogel extremely wide spacing was used soft two-dimensional template synthesize single-crystalline nanosheets in confined space. As consequence, flexible, ultrathin and large area gold atomically flat surface were produced hydrogel. optical electrical properties detected on single membrane.