Beaucage Peter A, van Dover R Bruce, DiSalvo Francis J, Gruner Sol M, Wiesner Ulrich
Materials Science & Engineering Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899, USA.
Adv Mater. 2021 Jul;33(26):e2006975. doi: 10.1002/adma.202006975. Epub 2021 May 16.
Superconducting quantum metamaterials are expected to exhibit a variety of novel properties, but have been a major challenge to prepare as a result of the lack of appropriate synthetic routes to high-quality materials. Here, the discovery of synthesis routes to block copolymer (BCP) self-assembly-directed niobium nitrides and carbonitrides is described. The resulting materials exhibit unusual structure retention even at temperatures as high as 1000 °C and resulting critical temperature, T , values comparable to their bulk analogues. Applying the concepts of soft matter self-assembly, it is demonstrated that a series of four different BCP-directed mesostructured superconductors are accessible from a single triblock terpolymer. Resulting materials display a mesostructure-dependent T without substantial variation of the XRD-measured lattice parameters. Finally, field-dependent magnetization measurements of a sample with double-gyroid morphology show abrupt jumps comparable in overall behavior to flux avalanches. Results suggest a fruitful convergence of soft and hard condensed matter science.
超导量子超材料有望展现出各种新奇特性，但由于缺乏制备高质量材料的合适合成路线，其制备一直是一项重大挑战。在此，描述了用于制备嵌段共聚物（BCP）自组装导向的氮化铌和碳氮化物的合成路线的发现。所得材料即使在高达1000℃的温度下仍表现出异常的结构保留，并且所得的临界温度(T_c)值与其块状类似物相当。应用软物质自组装的概念，证明了从单一三嵌段三元共聚物可获得一系列四种不同的BCP导向的介观结构超导体。所得材料显示出与介观结构相关的(T_c)，而X射线衍射测量的晶格参数没有实质性变化。最后，对具有双螺旋结构形态的样品进行的场相关磁化测量表明，其突变在整体行为上与磁通雪崩相当。结果表明软凝聚态物质科学和硬凝聚态物质科学取得了富有成效的融合。
