Anisotropic Self-Assembly of Asymmetric Mesoporous Hemispheres with Tunable Pore Structures at Liquid–Liquid Interfaces

Asymmetric materials have attracted tremendous interest because of their intriguing physicochemical properties and promising applications, but endowing them with precisely controlled morphologies and porous structures remains a formidable challenge. Herein, a facile micelle anisotropic self-assembly approach on a droplet surface is demonstrated to fabricate asymmetric carbon hemispheres with a jellyfish-like shape and radial multilocular mesostructure. This facile synthesis follows an interface-energy-mediated nucleation and growth mechanism, which allows easy control of the micellar self-assembly behaviors from isotropic to anisotropic modes. Furthermore, the micelle structure can also be systematically manipulated by selecting different amphiphilic triblock copolymers as a template, resulting in diverse novel asymmetric nanostructures, including eggshell, lotus, jellyfish, and mushroom-shaped architectures. The unique jellyfish-like hemispheres possess large open mesopores (∼14 nm), a high surface area (∼684 m2 g-1), abundant nitrogen dopants (∼6.3 wt %), a core-shell mesostructure and, as a result, manifest excellent sodium-storage performance in both half and full-cell configurations. Overall, our approach provides new insights and inspirations for exploring sophisticated asymmetric nanostructures for many potential applications.