Design and synthesis of Janus micro- and nanoparticles

Because the Roman god Janus was usually represented with two heads placed back to back, the term Janus is used for the description of particles whose surfaces of both hemispheres are different from a chemical point of view. So, they could be used as building blocks for supraparticular assemblies, as dual-functionalized devices, as particular surfactants if one hemisphere is hydrophilic and the other hydrophobic, etc. If they could allow the segregation of negative charges on one hemisphere and positive charges on the other one, they would display a giant dipole moment allowing their remote positioning by rotation in an electric field as a function of field polarity. This review deals with the great and…