Tunable thermo-reversible bicontinuous nanoparticle gel driven by the binary solvent segregation.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33568668.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-20701-3 and PMC identifier 7876140.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
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.