Low‐Temperature and Water‐Based Biotemplating of Nanostructured Foam‐Like Titania Films Using ß‐Lactoglobulin

Abstract

Given the broad use of nanostructured crystalline titania films, an environmentally friendly and more sustainable synthesis route is highly desirable. Here, a water-based, low-temperature route is presented to synthesize nanostructured foam-like crystalline titania films. A pearl necklace-like nanostructure is introduced as tailored titania morphology via biotemplating with the use of the major bovine whey protein ß-lactoglobulin (ß-lg). It is shown that titania crystallization in a brookite-anatase mixed phase is promoted via spray deposition at a comparatively low temperature of 120 °C. The obtained crystallites have an average grain size of (4.2 ± 0.3) nm. In situ grazing incidence small-angle and wide-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS/GIWAXS) are simultaneously performed to understand the kinetics of film formation and the templating role of ß-lg during spray coating. In the ß-lg:titania biohybrid composites, the crystal growth in semicrystalline titania clusters is sterically directed by the condensing ß-lg biomatrix. Due to using spray coating, the green chemistry approach to titania-based functional films can be scaled up on a large scale, which can potentially be used in photocatalytic processes or systems related to energy application.

Toluene‐Mediated Morphology Tuning of Diblock Copolymer‐Templated Porous Si/Ge/K/C Thin Films for Li‐Ion Batteries

“…The smallest objects are uncorrelated, which means that the smallest form factor is not modeled with a structure factor. [ 13 ] The horizontal line cuts with the corresponding best fits are shown in Figure a for ref and Figure 3b for the DCM films. The corresponding size distributions of the radii are normalized to the smallest form factor in the thin film (Figure 3c,d), to visualize structural changes of radii above 10 nm.…”

“…Estimates about crystal sizes are extracted from the FWHM by using the Scherrer equation. [ 13 ] Best fits are achieved by using two Gaussian fits in the 2 θ ‐range of Ge. The sharp reflex is attributed to a crystallite size of about 93 nm (Figure S10, Supporting Information).…”

“…Among the many different bottom-up approaches, sol-gel synthesis routines were successfully widely used, resulting in a manifold of different porous materials. [13][14][15] Perhaps, the most widely used porous material is porous titania, which is used in various fields like energy materials, e.g., solar cells, water splitting, or CO 2 reduction. [1,16,17] Importantly, other porous metal oxides also gained attention as promising energy materials like porous iron, tin, and zinc oxides.…”

Influence of the Sequence Motive Repeating Number on Protein Folding in Spider Silk Protein Films

“…The 2D GISAXS data was reduced to 1D intensity profiles along q y with the software DPDAK . The 1D intensity profiles were modeled to extract lateral domain sizes, with cylindrical and spherical form factors on a 1D paracrystal lattice within the distorted wave Born approximation, using the effective interface approximation and the local monodisperse approximation . Within this framework, the measured scattering intensity, I ( q ), is given as I ( q ) ∝ prefix∑ i N i · ⟨ | F false( q , R i false) | 2 ⟩ · S ( q , R i ) …”

Sprayed Hybrid Cellulose Nanofibril–Silver Nanowire Transparent Electrodes for Organic Electronic Applications

“…We use scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate the surface morphology of the electrodes and to estimate the thickness of the network junctions of both electrode types. Spray deposition offers the possibility to be combined with various surface characterization methods, leading to the possibility of in situ deposition experiments. , Hence, the results are corroborated by grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) and correlated to their electronic properties. We discuss the influence of the spray ink on the distribution of AgNWs on the surface and its effect on the conductivity of a larger area.…”