Glowing soft colloids give their structure away
- PDF / 200,620 Bytes
- 1 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 93 Downloads / 196 Views
Glowing soft colloids give their structure away
S
oft colloids such as polymer brushes and polymer-coated particles have a wide range of applications and could be used as biomimetic lubricants, for example in artificial implants. “Even though the microscopic properties of these colloids are widely recognized to play a key role in tailoring their macroscopic properties, they so far are poorly addressed in a variety of physically distinct soft and penetrable colloidal systems,” said researcher E. Stiakakis. With colleagues from the Institute of Complex Systems at Forschungszentrum Jülich, he combined smart material preparation and confocal fluorescent microscopy to visualize the microscopic behavior of two-dimensional (2D) lattices of polymer-coated particles. In the December 2014 issue of Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/ PhysRevLett.113268303), the researchers report grafting fluorescent markers onto
Energy Focus Confining LiBH4 in mesoporous silica yields solid electrolyte for Li-ion batteries
L
ithium-ion batteries are all around us; they are in our phones, our laptops, and even our cars. However, these batteries have not yet reached their potential and properties such as lifetimes and energy densities remain to be optimized. One of the major challenges is reducing the weight of these batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are currently filled with liquid or gel electrolytes, where the weight of these cannot easily be altered. In addition, the liquid is often flammable, which can be dangerous, especially during the fabrication process. A study published in the January 14 issue of Advanced Functional Materials (DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201402538; p. 184) shows promise for a new, all-solid lithium-ion battery that could potentially cut down the weight of the batteries.
204
MRS BULLETIN
•
VOLUME 40 • MARCH 2015
•
the DNA arms of charged DNA-coated particles. By modifying the position of the markers along the arm, the arm extension and the particle shape could be quantified. Furthermore, the researchers can image the way soft colloids deform when they are compressed by the action of a magnetic field – using superparamagnetic particles to control the density of the 2D arrays of particles. It turns out that the DNA arms get compacted without much entanglement with the arms of the neighboring particles, under pressures approaching the MPa range. This confirms that the low friction between particles comes from the lack of arm entanglement, hence the well-known lubrication properties. The researchers finally tested the defect tolerance of the 2D arrays and found that these accommodate large and small particles alike through particle shrinking and anisotropic deformations of the corona. E. Eiser, an expert in soft materials at the University of Cambridge working on
“This would be a big deal for cars,” said Petra E. de Jongh, a materials scientist at Utrecht University in The Netherlands and a co-author of the study. With lighter batteries in place, cars can achieve better gas mileage—this is particularly important to en
Data Loading...
