Materials Girl

Once upon a time I went to some polymer group’s dinner and heard a fantastic talk from a professor at Georgia Tech about co-block polymers and self assembly. So here is why this beautiful green stuff above is even possible to make. In a vast oversimplification… Co-block polymers can make highly specified shapes/structures determined on the % of each in the mix. (and their chemical composition, duh) The polymers like to be near themselves, rather than the other type of polymer, which prevents full blending. But what is really fascinating is that rather than make a increasingly thin layer on one edge, minimizing the interface, the polymer with the lower % concentration will disperse itself evenly throughout the other polymer. Meaning that fairly regular and patterned structures will self assemble! Magic! 

freshphotons:

“This electron micrograph (1100 nm wide) shows hollow nanostructures fabricated using a combination of block copolymer self-assembly and sequential infiltration synthesis. Gas phase precursors penetrate the polymer film and selectively grow inorganic material at the interfaces between the two polymer blocks. These novel materials are potentially useful as masks for nanolithography or as nanoscale catalytic reaction vessels.”