Sarkar, Amrita; Stefik, Morgan
Robust porous polymers enabled by a fast trifluoroacetic acid etch with improved selectivity for polylactide
Polylactide is a widely used sacrificial block for the preparation of porous polymers from ordered block copolymers. Although numerous etching strategies were developed in the past decade, demonstrations to date are limited by slow etch rates that require as long as a week for the etching of few-mm thick films.…
Light-induced dynamic shaping and self-division of multipodal polyelectrolyte-surfactant microarchitectures via azobenzene photomechanics
Martin, Nicolas; Sharma, Kamendra P.; Harniman, Robert L.; Richardson, Robert M.; Hutchings, Ricky J.; Alibhai, Dominic; Li, Mei; Mann, Stephen
Light-induced shape transformations represent a fundamental step towards the emergence of adaptive materials exhibiting photomechanical behaviours. Although a range of covalent azobenzene-based photoactive materials has been demonstrated, the use of dynamic photoisomerization in mesostructured soft solids involving non-covalent co-assembly has received little…
Effect of peptide self-assembly on the rheological properties of alginate-peptide conjugates solutions
Ochbaum, Guy; Bitton, Ronit
Alginate, a polysaccharide that gels in the presence of divalent ions is an obvious component of an injectable gel for regenerative medicine. Covalent bonding peptides to alginates is routinely used tailor alginate's biofunctionality. Here, we present a systematic investigation of the effect of three arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) -containing peptides, G6KRGDY,…
Tailoring the Morphology and Melting Points of Segmented Thermoplastic Polyurethanes by Self-Nucleation
Fernández-d’Arlas, Borja; Balko, Jens; Baumann, R. Peter; Pöselt, Elmar; Dabbous, Raphael; Eling, Berend; Thurn-Albrecht, Thomas; Müller, Alejandro J.
It is demonstrated that the melting behavior and the morphology of three segmented thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers (TPUs) can be tailored by applying self-nucleation (SN) procedures. The self-nucleating temperature ranges for each of the TPU have been first determined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), while their morphology was studied by polarized…
Sub-5 nm Patterning by Directed Self-Assembly of Oligo(Dimethylsiloxane) Liquid Crystal Thin Films
Nickmans, Koen; Murphy, Jeffrey N.; de Waal, Bas; Leclère, Philippe; Doise, Jan; Gronheid, Roel; Broer, Dick J.; Schenning, Albertus P. H. J.
Advanced Materials, 2016, vol 28, 45, pp. 10068-10072DOI:10.1002/adma.201602891Visit the full articleBack to the overview
Self-assembly of block copolymers via micellar intermediate states into vesicles on time scales from milliseconds to days
Fürst, Carolin; Zhang, Peng; Roth, Stephan V.; Drechsler, Markus; Förster, Stephan
Block copolymer micelles and vesicles are mostly prepared by the solvent mixing method, where the block copolymer is first dissolved in a common solvent for both blocks, which is then mixed with a selective solvent, mostly water, to induce self-assembly into the desired structure. Using a combination of microfluidic flow-focusing…
Self-organized in-plane ordering of nanostructures at epitaxial ferroelectric–ferromagnetic interfaces
Flaschmann, R.; Ye, J.; Paul, N.; Bern, F.; Esquinazi, P.; Müller-Buschbaum, P.; Stahn, J.; Böni, P.; Zheng, J.-G.; Aoki, T.; Paul, A.
The formation of self-assembled structures is of great interest in the field of ferroelectric (FE)–ferromagnetic (FM) oxide interfaces with novel functionalities driven by the combination of strain relaxation and diffusion/segregation processes occurring during epitaxial growth of Mn-based heterostructures. In epitaxial bilayers and multilayers of La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 (LSMO)/BaTiO3 (BTO) on (001)…
Chaperonin-inspired pH protection by mesoporous silica SBA-15 on myoglobin and lysozyme
Lynch, Michele M.; Liu, Jichuan; Nigra, Michael; Coppens, Marc-Olivier
Langmuir, 2016, vol 32, 37, pp. 9604–9610DOI:Visit the full articleBack to the overview
Disease-Homologous Mutation in the Cation Diffusion Facilitator Protein MamM Causes Single-Domain Structural Loss and Signifies Its Importance
Barber-Zucker, Shiran; Uebe, René; Davidov, Geula; Navon, Yotam; Sherf, Dror; Chill, Jordan H.; Kass, Itamar; Bitton, Ronit; Schüler, Dirk; Zarivach, Raz
Cation diffusion facilitators (CDF) are highly conserved, metal ion efflux transporters that maintain divalent transition metal cation homeostasis. Most CDF proteins contain two domains, the cation transporting transmembrane domain and the regulatory cytoplasmic C-terminal domain…
Toward Tailored Film Morphologies: The Origin of Crystal Orientation in Hybrid Perovskite Thin Films
Oesinghaus, Lukas; Schlipf, Johannes; Giesbrecht, Nadja; Song, Lin; Hu, Yinghong; Bein, Thomas; Docampo, Pablo; Müller-Buschbaum, Peter
Efficient perovskite solar cells can be produced by a wide variety of different methods. Previous results show that controlling the film morphology is critical to enhance the efficiency of the prepared devices. Here, grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) is used to study the morphology and especially the orientation distribution of…