Aerosol-assisted self-assembly of single-crystal core/nanoporous shell particles as model controlled release capsules

Controlled release is a central theme of nano-engineering and is important to a wide spectrum of technologies ranging from drug delivery to corrosion inhibition.1 Recently, several types of con-trolled release architectures have been developed based on incor-poration of the release agent in nanoporous hosts.2 In these con-structs, silica/surfactant self-assembly allows precise control of the host pore size, and various gating strategies have been used to mod-ulate the release characteristics.3 However, as these systems are syn-thesized in batch reactors requiring multiple synthesis steps,1-3 they may not be amenable to large-scale manufacturing. Here we de-scribe a rapid, single step, aerosol-assisted self-assembly process to fabricate model core shell particles in which a single-crystal core is incorporated in a spherical nanoporous particle. The combined control of pore size and pore surface chemistry allows the charac