Xi Yuyin, Lankone Ronald S, Sung Li-Piin, Liu Yun
Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899, USA.
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 Feb 10;12(1):910. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-20701-3.
Bicontinuous porous structures through colloidal assembly realized by non-equilibrium process is crucial to various applications, including water treatment, catalysis and energy storage. However, as non-equilibrium structures are process-dependent, it is very challenging to simultaneously achieve reversibility, reproducibility, scalability, and tunability over material structures and properties. Here, a novel solvent segregation driven gel (SeedGel) is proposed and demonstrated to arrest bicontinuous structures with excellent thermal structural reversibility and reproducibility, tunable domain size, adjustable gel transition temperature, and amazing optical properties. It is achieved by trapping nanoparticles into one of the solvent domains upon the phase separation of the binary solvent. Due to the universality of the solvent driven particle phase separation, SeedGel is thus potentially a generic method for a wide range of colloidal systems.
通过非平衡过程实现的胶体组装形成的双连续多孔结构对于包括水处理、催化和能量存储在内的各种应用至关重要。然而，由于非平衡结构依赖于过程，要在材料结构和性能上同时实现可逆性、可重复性、可扩展性和可调性极具挑战性。在此，提出并证明了一种新型的溶剂分离驱动凝胶（SeedGel），它能够捕获双连续结构，具有出色的热结构可逆性和可重复性、可调的畴尺寸、可调节的凝胶转变温度以及惊人的光学性质。这是通过在二元溶剂相分离时将纳米颗粒捕获到其中一个溶剂域中来实现的。由于溶剂驱动的颗粒相分离具有普遍性，因此SeedGel可能是一种适用于广泛胶体系统的通用方法。
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