Development of Liquid-crystalline Dendron-modified Fe3O4 Nanoparticles and Their Self-organized Structure

Abstract

The magnetic properties of nanoparticles (NPs) are affected by interperticle interactions. Thus, formation of magnetic NPs-based periodic structure enables us to control and modulate the their properties. However, it is quite difficult to form such magnetic NPs-based structure because magnetic NPs tend to aggregate due to their strong interactions. Thus, we focused our attention on thermotropic liquid crystalline dendrons with self-assembling property. In this study, we developed the dendron-modified Fe3O4 NPs with a thick dendron layer. The self-assembling behavior and the temperature-dependent structural ordering of the resulting dendron-modified NPs has been investigated.