H2020Индивидуална стипендия2020–2022

Star Polymers · When Soft Matter Goes Really Soft – A New Paradigm for Star Polymer Self-Assembly

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2020-01-13 → 2022-01-12
Финансиране от ЕС: 175 572 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Колоидни частици се използват като строителни елементи за създаване на структури, при които взаимодействията между тях се променят във времето. Това помага да се разбере как пътят на сглобяване влияе върху свойствата на крайния материал.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

When Soft Matter Goes Really Soft – A New Paradigm for Star Polymer Self-Assembly

Using colloidal particles as elementary building blocks for the bottom-up fabrication of superstructures is an attractive route toward functional materials. The characteristic colloidal dimension (10 – 1000 nm) render them uniquely suited for this purpose. The particles are sufficiently small for autonomous recruitment and assembly via Brownian or thermal motion, while the presence of the colloidal length scales endows these materials with unique photonic, mechanical, and porous properties. As for atomic and molecular materials, the arrangement of the particles in the assembled state is a key factor determining the material properties. In turn, these particle arrangements are heavily influence by how the individual particles interact with each other and how the particles are being processes in time. During this Marie-Curie action we aimed to increase the fundamental understanding of colloidal assembly by developing a new model system in which the interactions between the particles could be regulated in time. The first steps towards such new time-dependent colloidal model systems were explored during this project and an experimental proof of concept was provided. By regulating how the interactions change in time, different assembly pathway can be generated. Studying how the exact pathway influences the final assembled state might shed light on how kinetically trapped states can be prevented or even used to fabricate materials with different properties based on one single set of building blocks.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Biologic supramolecular assemblies, e.g., virus capsids and multiprotein complexes, show unprecedented complexity compared to man-made structures. A key feature of the building blocks facilitating the emergence of this structural complexity is their deformability. This enables them to reconfigure during assembly to find optimum orientations within the superstructure. Here, I propose to exploit the concept of reconfigurability as design criterion for developing a new class of colloidal building blocks. Where currently available hard particles fail to form macroscopic structures due to lack of building block uniformity and undesired metastable states encountered during assembly, introducing flexibility will prevent these adverse characteristics. The envisioned building blocks are based on polymer grafted cores, where the attached polymers arms comprise solvophilic and solvophobic blocks. The limited number of arms have significant conformational freedom, a feature absent in traditional hard particles. The solvophobic segments, located at the particle’s periphery, drive spontaneous polymer micro-phase separation into patchy domains which are then locked into place. These patches imprint directional interactions to guide self-assembly and are linked to the core via flexible solvophilic polymers, enabling patch fluctuations. The resulting patch adaptability prevents the system from getting trapped in non-equilibrium states and relaxes stringent requirements on geometric uniformity, promoting the formation of long-range ordered assemblies. Following simulation studies, these soft particles should have propensity to order into ‘open’ (quasi)crystalline lattices providing unique photonic, mechanical and porous characteristics.Complementing my physical/polymer synthetic background with pioneering analytic tools, e.g. time-resolved scattering and in situ electron microscopy, this project will detail a new paradigm for self-assembly and the importance of patch flexibility.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN · EindhovenКоординаторНидерландия