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Assembly of nothing: equilibrium fluids with designed structured porosity
Beth A Lindquist1, Ryan B Jadrich, Thomas M Truskett
1McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. truskett@che.utexas.edu.
Soft Matter
|February 18, 2016
Summary
Researchers designed a new particle interaction to create tunable, ordered pores in materials. This breakthrough enables control over material porosity for applications like gas adsorption and selective permeability.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Statistical Mechanics
- Soft Matter Physics
Background:
- Controlled porosity is crucial for applications like gas adsorption and selective permeability.
- Designing materials with specific pore structures remains a significant challenge.
Purpose of the Study:
- To design an isotropic pair interaction for self-assembling particles into ordered porous structures.
- To investigate the tunability of pore size and the emergence of various morphologies.
Main Methods:
- Utilized inverse methods of statistical mechanics to design particle interactions.
- Simulated self-assembly of particles under varying temperature, concentration, and density conditions.
Main Results:
- Successfully designed an interaction potential leading to lattice-ordered pores.
- Demonstrated tunability of pore size via temperature and particle concentration.
- Observed a rich phase diagram of microphase-separated structures, including lattices, columns, and lamellar phases.
Conclusions:
- The designed interaction effectively controls the formation of micro- to meso-scale porosity.
- The method offers a pathway to engineer materials with tailored porous architectures.
- Further exploration of interaction potentials can reveal novel self-assembled morphologies.
