Djeghdi Kenza, Karpov Dmitry, Abdollahi S Narjes, Godlewska Karolina, Iseli René, Holler Mirko, Donnelly Claire, Yuasa Takeshi, Sai Hiroaki, Wiesner Ulrich B, Steiner Ullrich, Wilts Bodo D, Musya Michimasa, Fukami Shunsuke, Ohno Hideo, Diaz Ana, Llandro Justin, Gunkel Ilja
Adolphe Merkle Institute, University of Fribourg, Chemin des Verdiers 4, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
Paul Scherrer Institute, Forschungsstrasse 111, 5232 Villigen-PSI, Switzerland.
ACS Nano. 2024 Oct 1;18(39):26503-26513. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.3c10669. Epub 2024 Sep 16.
Block copolymers are recognized as a valuable platform for creating nanostructured materials. Morphologies formed by block copolymer self-assembly can be transferred into a wide range of inorganic materials, enabling applications including energy storage and metamaterials. However, imaging of the underlying, often complex, nanostructures in large volumes has remained a challenge, limiting progress in materials development. Taking advantage of recent advances in X-ray nanotomography, we noninvasively imaged exceptionally large volumes of nanostructured hybrid materials at high resolution, revealing a single-diamond morphology in a triblock terpolymer-gold composite network. This morphology, which is ubiquitous in nature, has so far remained elusive in block copolymer-derived materials, despite its potential to create materials with large photonic bandgaps. The discovery was made possible by the precise analysis of distortions in a large volume of the self-assembled diamond network, which are difficult to unambiguously assess using traditional characterization tools. We anticipate that high-resolution X-ray nanotomography, which allows imaging of much larger sample volumes than electron-based tomography, will become a powerful tool for the quantitative analysis of complex nanostructures and that structures such as the triblock terpolymer-directed single diamond will enable the generation of advanced multicomponent composites with hitherto unknown property profiles.
嵌段共聚物被认为是制造纳米结构材料的宝贵平台。嵌段共聚物自组装形成的形态可以转移到多种无机材料中，从而实现包括能量存储和超材料在内的应用。然而，对大量潜在的、通常很复杂的纳米结构进行成像仍然是一个挑战，限制了材料开发的进展。利用X射线纳米断层扫描技术的最新进展，我们以高分辨率对超大体积的纳米结构混合材料进行了非侵入性成像，揭示了一种三嵌段三元共聚物-金复合网络中的单菱形形态。这种形态在自然界中普遍存在，尽管它有潜力制造具有大光子带隙的材料，但迄今为止在嵌段共聚物衍生材料中仍然难以捉摸。通过对大量自组装菱形网络中的畸变进行精确分析才得以实现这一发现，而使用传统表征工具很难明确评估这些畸变。我们预计，高分辨率X射线纳米断层扫描技术能够对比基于电子的断层扫描大得多的样品体积进行成像，将成为定量分析复杂纳米结构的有力工具，并且像三嵌段三元共聚物导向的单菱形这样的结构将能够生成具有迄今未知性能特征的先进多组分复合材料。
