Hierarchically ordered porous transition metal compounds from one-pot type 3D printing approaches
Solution-based soft matter self-assembly (SA) promises unique material structures and properties from approaches including additive manufacturing/three-dimensional (3D) printing. The 3D printing of periodically ordered porous functional inorganic materials through SA unfolding during printing remains a major challenge, however, due to the often vastly different ordering kinetics of separate processes at different length scales. Here, we report a "one-pot" direct ink writing process to produce hierarchically porous transition metal nitrides and precursor oxides from block copolymer (BCP) SA. Heat treatment protocols identified in various environments enable mesostructure retention in the final crystalline materials with periodic lattices on three distinct length scales. Moreover, embedded printing enables the first BCP directed mesoporous non-self-supporting helical oxides and nitrides. Resulting nitrides are superconducting, with record nanoconfinement-induced upper critical fields correlated with BCP molar mass and record surface areas for compound superconductors. Results suggest scalable porous functional inorganic material formation approaches for applications including catalysis, sensing, and microelectronics.
Authors
- Peter A. Beaucage (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2147-0728)
- R. Paxton Thedford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0811-227X)
- Jörg G. Werner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7845-086X)
- Sujit Sheth (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7640-1244)
- William R. T. Tait (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8932-9416)
- William Moore (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0407-5347)
- Sol M. Grüner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1171-4426)
- Thomas A. Tartaglia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3577-6437)
- R. B. van Dover (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6166-5650)
- Ulrich Wiesner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6934-3755)
- Guillaume Freychet (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8406-798X)
- Fei Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8191-8096)
- Yuanzhi Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7569-2887)
- Julia Thom-Levy
Institutions
- Boston University (US)
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (US)
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (US)
- Cornell University (US)
- Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (FR)
- Laboratoire d'Électronique des Technologies de l'Information (FR)
- NIST Center for Neutron Research (US)
- Université Grenoble Alpes (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2025-08-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62794-8
- Citations
- 4
- Primary Topic
- Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.73
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Empire State Development Corporation
- National Institutes of Health
- Office of Science
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences
- Division of Materials Research
- Brookhaven National Laboratory
- Air Force Research Laboratory