Patterning two-dimensional free-standing surfaces with mesoporous conducting polymers

Abstract

The ability to pattern functional moieties with well-defined architectures is highly important in material science, nanotechnology and bioengineering. Although two-dimensional surfaces can serve as attractive platforms, direct patterning them in solution with regular arrays remains a major challenge. Here we develop a versatile route to pattern two-dimensional free-standing surfaces in a controlled manner assisted by monomicelle close-packing assembly of block copolymers, which is unambiguously revealed by direct visual observation. This strategy allows for bottom-up patterning of polypyrrole and polyaniline with adjustable mesopores on various functional free-standing surfaces, including two-dimensional graphene, molybdenum sulfide, titania nanosheets and even on one-dimensional carbon nanotubes. As exemplified by graphene oxide-based mesoporous polypyrrole nanosheets, the unique sandwich structure with adjustable pore sizes (5–20 nm) and thickness (35–45 nm) as well as enlarged specific surface area (85 m2 g−1) provides excellent specific capacitance and rate performance for supercapacitors. Therefore, this approach will shed light on developing solution-based soft patterning of given interfaces towards bespoke functions.

Multiscale structural and electronic control of molybdenum disulfide foam for highly efficient hydrogen production

“…This includes sufficient transport of reactants and products, accessibility of catalyst surface, abundant active sites and enough catalytic capability. Similar to the recent developments in the mesoporous framework of graphene222324 or polymer2526 foam, the design and preparation of a uniform mesoporous MoS 2 foam could simultaneously facilitate the mass transport and accessibility of active sites. Yet, unlike the flexibility of carbon atoms skeleton in graphene and organic small molecules in polymers, MoS 2 with single-crystal layer composed of three molecular layers (S–Mo–S) appears much more inflexible, which leads to such engineering still remaining a great challenge.…”

Mesoporous metallic rhodium nanoparticles

“…Making mesoporous frameworks composed of carbon4567, metal oxides89, silica10111213, polymers141516 and metals171819 has led to enhanced performance in catalysis2021, energy conversion and storage2223, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)2425 and chemical/biochemical sensing26. In particular, the application of mesoporous noble metals in the field of heterogeneous catalysis has distinct and numerous advantages in terms of performance.…”

Nature-inspired thermo-responsive multifunctional membrane adaptively hybridized with PNIPAm and PPy

“…22,27 To improve the performance of CPs, a diverse set of architectures have been adopted and applied, because well-defined architectures are highly important in materials science, nanotechnology and bioengineering. 19,[28][29][30] However, direct and precise patterning of various architectures is still a major challenge because the conventional technologies that are used to produce designed polymers have poor reproducibility and involve multiple fabrication steps, which makes the process expensive, time-consuming and difficult to scale-up. 30 In this study, inspired by the functional features of plants, such as the bending of the pulvinus in M. pudica, the gating of stomata in leaf, and the selective filtering of the cellular membrane, a multifunctional hybrid membrane (HM) with thermo-responsive and conductive properties was adaptively synthesized with poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) and poly(pyrrole) (PPy), to enhance the functionalities of conventional CP hydrogels.…”