Article
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Mengwei Xu, Ting Lu, Dongming Qi, Ling Bai, Ying Pan, Dong Zhang, Hongting Zhao
Summary: In this study, monodisperse brown polysulfide (PSF) nanospheres and cross-linkable polyacrylate (CLPA) nanoparticles were used to construct vivid amorphous photonic crystal (APC) patterns with high mechanical stability. The high refractive index and light-absorbing characteristics of PSF nanospheres suppressed multiple incoherent light scattering inside APCs, resulting in noniridescent structural colors with high color saturation. The embedding of CLPA nanoparticles enhanced the mechanical stability of the APCs. The optimized APC samples displayed vivid colorful colors and excellent resistance towards mechanical scratches.
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY C
(2024)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Javier Fonseca, Lingxin Meng, Pedro Moronta, Inhar Imaz, Cefe Lopez, Daniel Maspoch
Summary: Controlling the size of COF particles allows for the fabrication of porous photonic crystals (PhCs) with a face-centered cubic arrangement. By adsorbing species within the pores of COF particles, the Bragg reflection can be altered, allowing for the modulation of the structure and properties of the PhCs. Given the abundance of existing COFs and their diverse properties, this discovery is expected to enable the development of colloidal PhCs with unprecedented functionality.
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Jorge Sanchez Llorens, Lorenzo Barbera, Ahmet F. Demirors, Andre R. Studart
Summary: A light-based printing platform is reported to shape colloidal glasses into 3D objects with complex geometries and vivid structural color. The photonic properties of the printed objects reflect the locally ordered microstructure of the glass. The platform demonstrates the capability to create 3D objects with isotropic structural color.
ADVANCED MATERIALS
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Toshimitsu Kanai, Sato Nakagawa, Hikaru Takeshima, Yuna Hirano
Summary: This article introduces a colored angle-independent amorphous phase of monodisperse colloids, which can change color by adjusting the particle volume fraction, and can be immobilized in hydrogel films to preserve spectral properties, and the color can be tuned by changing the ethanol concentration.
JOURNAL OF COLLOID AND INTERFACE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Rachel S. Hendley, Lechuan Zhang, Michael A. Bevan
Summary: We report a controlled interfacial assembly and reconfiguration method for rectangular prism colloidal particles between microstructures with varying positional and orientational order. By programming time-dependent electric fields, we can manipulate the particle's position, orientation, compression, and chaining. We have identified a set of order parameters that define each state, and used them as reaction coordinates to capture the microstructure evolution. The trajectory manifolds between states reveal a dynamic pathway map that provides information about pathway accessibility, reversibility, and kinetics. By navigating this dynamic pathway map, we can achieve reconfiguration between states on minute time scales, which is useful for particle-based materials processing and device responses. Our findings demonstrate a conceptually general approach to control the assembly and reconfiguration of self-organizing building blocks that respond to global external stimuli.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Minchao Liu, Cheng Shang, Tiancong Zhao, Hongyue Yu, Yufang Kou, Zirui Lv, Mengmeng Hou, Fan Zhang, Qiaowei Li, Dongyuan Zhao, Xiaomin Li
Summary: Porous anisotropic nanohybrids have attracted attention because of their unique properties including high surface area, tunable pore structures, and controllable compositions. Here, authors report a selective occupation strategy to achieve site-specific anisotropic growth of amorphous mesoporous subunits on crystalline MOFs.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Rachel S. Hendley, Isaac Torres-Diaz, Michael A. Bevan
Summary: By identifying analytical potentials for dipole-field and dipole-dipole interactions, we match experimental and simulated configurations of anisotropic epoxy colloidal particles in high frequency AC electric fields. The inverse Monte Carlo simulation algorithm helps determine optimal fits of analytical potentials to capture experimental observations. The stretched point dipole potential is found suitable at all concentrations, field amplitudes, and degrees of ordering, showing simplicity, accuracy, and adjustability for modeling field mediated microstructures and assembly of systematically varying anisotropic particle shapes.
Article
Chemistry, Applied
Laurinda R. P. Areias, Jose Paulo S. Farinha
Summary: Structural color is a non-fading pigment that is obtained from materials with periodic variation of refractive index. It has low environmental impact and toxicity and can cover the full visible spectrum by tuning the size and arrangement of nanoparticles. The optical properties of these pigments are directly related to the arrangement of nanoparticles within the pigment.
Article
Polymer Science
Naiyu Liu, Zhikun Zheng, Dingshan Yu, Wei Hong, Hailu Liu, Xudong Chen
Summary: A facile method for building responsive photonic crystal patterns was developed, utilizing commercially printed patterns as masks to induce invisible patterns through wetting. The masked areas exhibit strong structural colors while the unmasked areas remain transparent, providing a unique and reversible wetting feature. This programmable printing technique is expected to be an environmentally friendly approach for scalable invisible optical anti-counterfeiting technology.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Jia-Wei Wang, Xingjiang Wu, Xiao-Qing Yu, Min Guo, Jin Zhao, Liangliang Zhu, Su Chen
Summary: This study presents the development of core-shell poly(styrene-acrylic)@polypyrrole colloidal nanoparticles using droplet microfluidic technology to achieve high assembly efficiency and saturated angle-independent structural colors. The nanoparticles are assembled into a CPC film through membrane separation-assisted assembly and electrostatic spraying strategies, showcasing excellent photothermal properties for potential applications in next-generation photothermal fields.
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Yu-Wei Sun, Zhan-Wei Li, Zi-Qin Chen, You-Liang Zhu, Zhao-Yan Sun
Summary: A new strategy for constructing colloidal cubic diamond crystals through cooperative self-assembly of surface-anisotropic Janus colloids and isotropic colloidal spheres is proposed. The self-assembly is achieved by tuning the interaction and particle size ratio of the colloidal building blocks. The resulting cubic diamond lattices exhibit wide and complete photonic bandgaps that can be easily adjusted by tuning the particle size ratio.
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Zhan-Wei Li, Yu-Wei Sun, Yan-Hui Wang, You-Liang Zhu, Zhong-Yuan Lu, Zhao-Yan Sun
Summary: Using simple deformable triblock Janus colloids, increasing particle softness enhances the self-assembly and photonic bandgap performance of the structures. Direct pyrochlore lattices formed from overlapping soft particles exhibit larger photonic bandgaps than nonoverlapping structures, and proper overlap caused by softness can significantly improve the photonic properties of the structures.
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Hideyo Tsurusawa, Hajime Tanaka
Summary: Experiments reveal a hierarchical structural ordering driven by local potential energy in amorphous gels, making them distinct from amorphous glasses. This ordering is driven by the potential energy, not free energy. These findings will deepen our understanding of gel and glass.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Cicely Shillingford, Brandon M. Kim, Marcus Weck
Summary: Capillary assembly of liquid particles (CALP) is a microfabrication strategy for engineering arbitrarily shaped polymer colloids. CALP demonstrates versatility by engineering geometrically diverse Janus and patchy colloids using consecutive assembly and heterogeneous coassembly. It enables the design and fabrication of colloids with complex internal construction to target hierarchical functional materials, with the potential for further processing into colloid-based microscale devices.
Article
Polymer Science
Miaomiao Li, Zhan-Wei Li, Quanqian Lyu, Bolun Peng, Rui Zhong, Meiru Zhao, Bijin Xiong, Gi -Ra Yi, Lianbin Zhang, Jintao Zhu
Summary: This study presents a general strategy for the one-step construction of colloidal photonic composites (CPCs) with tunable structures. By kinetically controlling the supramolecular crosslinking between colloidal particles (CPs) and supramolecular oligomers, CPCs with structures ranging from short-range to long-range order were achieved. The resulting CPCs exhibit structural colors, versatile mechanical strengths, and appealing mechanochromic and self-healing capabilities.
Article
Polymer Science
Takashi Hamada, Kimio Yoshimura, Kota Takeuchi, Shun Watanabe, Yue Zhao, Akihiro Hiroki, Tokio Hagiwara, Hideyuki Shishitani, Susumu Yamaguchi, Hirohisa Tanaka, Aurel Radulescu, Kenji Ohwada, Yasunari Maekawa
Summary: A new beta-hydrogen-free imidazole monomer, 2-methyl-N-methyl-4(5)-vinylimidazole (2M4VIm), has been synthesized and used in the preparation of improved anion exchange membranes (AEMs) with higher conductivity and water uptake. Small-angle neutron scattering measurements reveal hydrophilic/hydrophobic two-phase separation in the synthesized AEMs, and they exhibit higher alkaline stability.
MACROMOLECULAR CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
(2021)
Article
Polymer Science
Yue Zhao, Kimio Yoshimura, Toshinori Motegi, Akihiro Hiroki, Aurel Radulescu, Yasunari Maekawa
Summary: A fully hydrated Nafion membrane is considered a three-component system, exhibiting structural heterogeneities at different scales among the main chain, side chain, and water domains. The contrast variation small-angle neutron scattering technique was applied to quantitatively analyze the scattering intensity profiles of each component. Cross-term analysis of PSFs indicated that the main-chain domains tend to phase-separate from either the side-chain or water domains.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Junyu Ge, Bin Ding, Shuai Hou, Manlin Luo, Donguk Nam, Hongwei Duan, Huajian Gao, Yee Cheong Lam, Hong Li
Summary: The authors have developed a room-temperature ultrasonic nanoimprinting technique, named nanojackhammer, which addresses the challenges faced by nanoimprinting in imprinting hard materials at low or room temperature and in fabricating complex nanostructures rapidly by capitalizing on the concentration of ultrasonic energy flow at nanoscale.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Takashi Hamada, Yue Zhao, Kimio Yoshimura, Aurel Radulescu, Kenji Ohwada, Yasunari Maekawa
Summary: Increasing the content of styrene can improve the conductivity and water uptake of anion exchange membranes, but excessive content can lead to significant decreases. Water-rich nano-domains can enhance the conductivity and water uptake of the membranes, resulting in improved performance. Increasing the styrene content can also enhance the alkaline durability of the anion exchange membranes.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Maria-Maddalena Schiavone, Yue Zhao, Hiroki Iwase, Hiroshi Arima-Osonoi, Shin-ichi Takata, Aurel Radulescu
Summary: The functionalized solid-state sulfonation process enhances the hydrophilicity of the amorphous regions of sPS, enabling proton conduction upon membrane hydration and increasing its potential as a candidate for proton exchange membrane applications. Doping the sulfonated sPS membrane with fullerenes improves its resistance to oxidative decomposition. This study investigates the relationship between the morphology of the hydrated domains and the proton conductivity in sulfonated sPS-fullerene composite membranes under different temperature and relative humidity conditions using small-angle neutron scattering, providing insights into the hydration and conductivity pathways of this material.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Yun Xu, Wei Huang, Yan Zhang, Hongwei Duan, Fei Xiao
Summary: This article presents a highly efficient multichannel microfluidic electrochemical sensor integrated with an electroactive nanocarbon microelectrode for sensitive and selective detection of multiple biomarkers in different biological samples. The nanocarbon microelectrode features a stem of freestanding N, B-codoped graphene fiber and high-density bristles of Co, N-codoped carbon nanotube arrays, leading to promoted electrocatalytic mechanism. The structural characteristics, high catalytic activities, and favorable biocompatibility of the bottlebrush nanocarbon electrodes provide opportunities for multichannel, microfluidic detection of redox-active biomolecules.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
(2022)
Article
Polymer Science
Jielin Ma, Shuai Hou, Derong Lu, Bo Zhang, Qirong Xiong, Mary B. Chan-Park, Hongwei Duan
Summary: Cationic polymers with prominent antimicrobial activity have been developed, but their practical applications are hindered by the nonspecific electrostatic interaction-induced cellular and in vivo toxicities. In this study, a caging strategy based on a block copolymer was developed to safely deliver antimicrobial cationic polymers. The caged polymers showed excellent bactericidal effects activated by lipase released by specific bacteria, while exhibiting minimal binding and toxicity against mammalian cells and nonspecific bacteria.
MACROMOLECULAR RAPID COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Toshinori Motegi, Kimio Yoshimura, Yue Zhao, Akihiro Hiroki, Yasunari Maekawa
Summary: The structure of a polymer electrolyte membrane can be characterized semi-quantitatively using AFM, showing discontinuous changes in the radius and interdomain distance of PSSA domains at a threshold grafting degree of 39%. This discontinuity is believed to be caused by the fusion of adjacent domains to form larger sizes and spacings.
Article
Polymer Science
Yue Zhao, Kimio Yoshimura, Shinichi Sawada, Toshinori Motegi, Akihiro Hiroki, Aurel Radulescu, Yasunari Maekawa
Summary: The structure of radiation-grafted proton-exchange membranes made of poly(styrenesulfonic acid)-grafted poly(ethylene-co-tetrafluoroethylene) was studied using partial scattering function analysis. The results showed the existence of mass fractal structures formed by the aggregation of graft polymer grains, which consist of homogeneously distributed graft polymer and water nanodomains. These structures have a significant impact on the membrane conductivity.
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Derong Lu, Shuai Hou, Sheng Liu, Qirong Xiong, Yonghao Chen, Hongwei Duan
Summary: We report the self-assembly of polymer-coated magnetoplasmonic Janus nanoparticles driven by amphiphilicity, which results in well-defined colloidal ensembles with controllable size, morphology, and dimension. By coating pH-responsive block copolymer and hydrophilic polymers on plasmonic and magnetic sides of the nanoparticles, respectively, we can achieve a direct correlation between the amphiphilicity of the building blocks and the structural parameters of the ensembles. This study provides insight into the self-assembly of functional nanocrystals and offers possibilities for tuning interparticle distance and studying metal-fluorophore interaction.
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Van Cuong Mai, Di Li, Hongwei Duan
Summary: Phenolic compound-based functional coatings have wide applications in biomedicine, allowing for flexible adjustment of chemical and surface properties. Understanding the formation mechanism of phenolic coatings is crucial for meeting the emerging needs in biomaterials and medical devices.
Review
Materials Science, Biomaterials
Bo Zhang, Derong Lu, Hongwei Duan
Summary: Bacterial infection is a leading cause of death worldwide, and the emergence of antibiotic resistance has worsened the problem. Responsive antibacterial materials, as alternatives to traditional antibiotics, have shown great potential in combating resistant bacteria and avoiding side effects. This review introduces responsive antibacterial materials based on intrinsic and extrinsic stimulus signals, and discusses their biomedical applications in therapeutics and medical devices.
BIOMATERIALS SCIENCE
(2023)
Review
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Shuai Hou, Ling Bai, Derong Lu, Hongwei Duan
Summary: Self-assembly bridges nanoscale and microscale colloidal particles into macroscale functional materials. Surface chemistry of nanoparticles plays a predominant role in driving the self-assembly at water/oil interfaces. Interfacial self-assembly methods are rapid, cost-effective, scalable, and compatible with existing fabrication technologies, thus promoting widespread interest in a broad range of research fields.
ACCOUNTS OF CHEMICAL RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Polymer Science
Yue Zhao, Kimio Yoshimura, Shinichi Sawada, Akihiro Hiroki, Aurel Radulescu, Yasunari Maekawa
Summary: We propose a new index, the local hydration number (lambda local), for evaluating the local ion-water interactions and ion transport efficiency in polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs). By using contrast-variation small-angle neutron scattering technique and partial scattering function analysis, we accurately determine the lambda local values at the micro-(nano-) scale to the molecular level of PEMs. The obtained lambda local values are close to the conventional hydration number lambda, indicating that all water molecules interact with sulfonic acid groups in the PEMs.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Maria-Maddalena Schiavone, David Hermann Lamparelli, Christophe Daniel, Manuchar Golla, Yue Zhao, Hiroki Iwase, Hiroshi Arima-Osonoi, Shin-ichi Takata, Laszlo Szentmiklosi, Boglarka Maroti, Juergen Allgaier, Aurel Radulescu
Summary: This paper presents a method for structural analysis of semi-crystalline polymers using small-angle (SANS) and wide-angle (WANS) neutron scattering techniques. The method enables precise characterization of multi-component systems under application-relevant conditions. Experimental results obtained with syndiotactic polystyrene (sPS) membranes demonstrate the feasibility and broad applicability of this approach.
JOURNAL OF APPLIED CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
(2023)
