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Nanorods of Well-Defined Length and Monodisperse Cross-Section Obtained from Electrostatic Complexation of Nanoparticles with a Semiflexible Biopolymer
We show by combining small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and
cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM) that anionic silica
nanoparticles (SiNPs) assemble into well-defined 1D cluster when mixed with a
dilute solution of semiflexible chitosan polycation. The nanorods are stable in
excess of SiNPs and composed of 10 SiNPs well-ordered into straight single
strands with length Lrod \approx 184.0 nm and radius Rrod = 9.2 nm = RSiNPs. We
point out that the ratio between the chitosan persistence length and the SiNP
radius, which is here equal to 1, can be the determining condition to obtain
such original objects
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