Advanced Electron Microscopy of Nanophased Synthetic Polymers and Soft Complexes for Energy and Medicine Applications

After decades of developments, electron microscopy has become a powerful and irreplaceable tool in understanding the ionic, electrical, mechanical, chemical, and other functional performances of next-generation polymers and soft complexes. The recent progress in electron microscopy of nanostructured polymers and soft assemblies is important for applications in many different fields, including, but not limited to, mesoporous and nanoporous materials, absorbents, membranes, solid electrolytes, battery electrodes, ion- and electron-transporting materials, organic semiconductors, soft robotics, optoelectronic devices, biomass, soft magnetic materials, and pharmaceutical drug design. For synthetic polymers and soft complexes, there are four main characteristics that differentiate them from their inorganic or biomacromolecular counterparts in electron microscopy studies: (1) lower contrast, (2) abundance of light elements, (3) polydispersity or nanomorphological variations, and (4) large changes induced by electron beams. Since 2011, the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been working with numerous facility users on nanostructured polymer composites, block copolymers, polymer brushes, conjugated molecules, organic–inorganic hybrid nanomaterials, organic–inorganic interfaces, organic crystals, and other soft complexes. This review crystalizes some of the essential challenges, successes, failures, and techniques during the process in the past ten years. It also presents some outlooks and future expectations on the basis of these works at the intersection of electron microscopy, soft matter, and artificial intelligence. Machine learning is expected to automate and facilitate image processing and information extraction of polymer and soft hybrid nanostructures in aspects such as dose-controlled imaging and structure analysis.

Effect of crystallinity on the recovery rate of superhydrophobicity in plasma-nanostructured polymers

This study investigates the influence of molecular properties as well as the macroscopic structure on surface properties.

Nanocellular Polymers: The Challenge of Creating Cells in the Nanoscale

The evolution of technology means that increasingly better materials are needed. It is well known that as a result of their interesting properties, nanocellular polymers perform better than microcellular ones. For this reason, the investigation on nanocellular materials is nowadays a very topical issue. In this paper, the different approaches for the production of these materials in our laboratory are explained, and results obtained by using polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) are shown. Homogeneous nucleation has been studied by using raw PMMA, while two different systems were used for heterogeneous nucleation; adding nanoparticles to the system and using nanostructured polymers as solid precursors for foaming. The effects of the different parameters of the production process (gas dissolution foaming process) have been evaluated for all systems being possible to establish a comparison between the materials produced by different approaches. Moreover, the limitations and future work to optimise the materials produced are also discussed.

Nanostructured polymers with embedded self-assembled networks: reversibly tunable phase behaviors and physical properties

Above the melting point of PEG, gel states were obtained due to the formation of DBS nanofibrillar networks in the PEG matrix, followed by liquid states upon further heating.

Charge transporting nanostructured polymers for electrochemical systems – a themed collection

Guest editors Shrayesh N. Patel and Nitash P. Balsara introduce this themed collection on charge transporting nanostructured polymers for electrochemical systems.