Block Copolymer-Directed Single-Diamond Hybrid Structures Derived from X-ray Nanotomography
Block copolymers are recognized as a valuable platform for creating nanostructured materials. Morphologies formed by block copolymer self-assembly can be transferred into a wide range of inorganic materials, enabling applications including energy storage and metamaterials. However, imaging of the underlying, often complex, nanostructures in large volumes has remained a challenge, limiting progress in materials development. Taking advantage of recent advances in X-ray nanotomography, we noninvasively imaged exceptionally large volumes of nanostructured hybrid materials at high resolution, revealing a single-diamond morphology in a triblock terpolymer-gold composite network. This morphology, which is ubiquitous in nature, has so far remained elusive in block copolymer-derived materials, despite its potential to create materials with large photonic bandgaps. The discovery was made possible by the precise analysis of distortions in a large volume of the self-assembled diamond network, which are difficult to unambiguously assess using traditional characterization tools. We anticipate that high-resolution X-ray nanotomography, which allows imaging of much larger sample volumes than electron-based tomography, will become a powerful tool for the quantitative analysis of complex nanostructures and that structures such as the triblock terpolymer-directed single diamond will enable the generation of advanced multicomponent composites with hitherto unknown property profiles.
Authors
- Ana Díaz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0479-4752)
- René Iseli
- Karolina Godlewska
- S. Narjes Abdollahi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8994-5355)
- Justin Llandro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1362-6083)
- Claire Donnelly (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9942-2419)
- Mirko Holler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8141-0148)
- Hiroaki Sai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4268-2148)
- Ullrich Steiner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5936-339X)
- Shunsuke Fukami (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5750-2990)
- Dmitry Karpov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5095-7300)
- Hideo Ohno (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9688-8259)
- Ulrich Wiesner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6934-3755)
- Ilja Gunkel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5738-5309)
- Bodo D. Wilts (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2727-7128)
- Michimasa Musya
- Kenza Djeghdi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4631-4999)
- Takeshi Yuasa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8924-6730)
Institutions
- University of Fribourg (CH)
- University of Salzburg (AT)
- Tohoku University (JP)
- Cornell University (US)
- European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (FR)
- Paul Scherrer Institute (CH)
- Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (DE)
- Adolphe Merkle Institute (CH)
- Spintronics Research Network of Japan (JP)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ACS Nano
- Published
- 2024-09-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.3c10669
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Block Copolymer Self-Assembly
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.35
Funders
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- Adolphe Merkle Foundation
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Tohoku University
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- National Center of Competence in Research Bio-Inspired Materials, University of Fribourg
- Division of Materials Research
- HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions