The Formation of Supramolecular Rigid Glass Based on Transparent Deep Eutectic.

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Polymer Chemistry
• Supramolecular Chemistry

Background:

• Developing rigid and hard transparent materials from low-molecular-weight building blocks via non-covalent bonding presents significant challenges.
• Existing strategies for enhancing supramolecular material performance often involve complex designs and lengthy syntheses, necessitating alternative approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a fundamentally new strategy for creating transparent, mechanically robust supramolecular materials.
• To validate a design combining non-covalent molecular recognition, deep eutectic solvent formation, and solvent-free photopolymerization.

Main Methods:

• Utilized metal coordination and hydrogen bonding between zinc tetrafluoroborate hydrate (ZTH) and acrylamide (AM) to form ZTH-AM.
• Employed ZTH-AM as a glass liquid analogue to suppress nucleation and crystallization.
• Fabricated bulk transparent poly[ZTH-AM] supramolecular glass via photopolymerization.

Main Results:

• Successfully synthesized a transparent supramolecular glass, poly[ZTH-AM].
• The material demonstrated excellent mechanical properties, including high tensile strength (93.50 MPa) and Young's modulus (1.12 GPa).
• The obtained glass exhibited significant hardness (92.1 HD).

Conclusions:

• The developed method offers a simplified and effective route to high-performance transparent supramolecular materials.
• This approach overcomes limitations of existing methods by avoiding complex designs and tedious syntheses.
• The resulting poly[ZTH-AM] represents a promising new class of rigid and hard transparent materials.