IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v12y2021i1d10.1038_s41467-020-20701-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tunable thermo-reversible bicontinuous nanoparticle gel driven by the binary solvent segregation

Author

Listed:
  • Yuyin Xi

    (National Institute of Standards and Technology
    University of Delaware)

  • Ronald S. Lankone

    (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

  • Li-Piin Sung

    (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

  • Yun Liu

    (National Institute of Standards and Technology
    University of Delaware
    University of Delaware)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuyin Xi & Ronald S. Lankone & Li-Piin Sung & Yun Liu, 2021. "Tunable thermo-reversible bicontinuous nanoparticle gel driven by the binary solvent segregation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-20701-3
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20701-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20701-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-020-20701-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuyin Xi & Fan Zhang & Yuanchi Ma & Vivek M. Prabhu & Yun Liu, 2022. "Finely tunable dynamical coloration using bicontinuous micrometer-domains," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-7, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-20701-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.