| Literature DB >> 28959006 |
Seunggun Yu1,2, Hyesung Cho1,3, Jun Pyo Hong1, Hyunchul Park1, Jason Christopher Jolly3, Hong Suk Kang3, Jin Hong Lee1, Junsoo Kim4, Seung Hwan Lee1, Albert S Lee1, Soon Man Hong1,5, Cheolmin Park2, Shu Yang6, Chong Min Koo7,8,9.
Abstract
Designing topographic clusters is of significant interest, yet it remains challenging as they often lack mobility or deformability. Here we exploit the huge volumetric expansion (up to 3000%) of a new type of building block, thermally expandable microbombs. They consist of a viscoelastic polymeric shell and a volatile gas core, which, within structural confinement, create micro-clusters via inverse jamming and topographical close-packing. Upon heating, microbombs anchored in rigid confinement underwent balloon-like blowing up, allowing for dense clusters via soft interplay between viscoelastic shells. Importantly, the confinement is unyielding against the internal pressure of the microbombs, thereby enabling self-assembled clusters, which can be coupled with topographic inscription to introduce structural hierarchy on the clusters. Our strategy provides densely packed yet ultralight clusters with a variety of complex shapes, cleavages, curvatures, and hierarchy. In turn, these clusters will enrich our ability to explore the assemblies of the ever-increasing range of microparticle systems.Self-assembled systems are normally composed of incompressible building blocks, which constrain their space filling efficiency. Yu et al. show programmable, densely packed clusters using thermally expandable soft microparticles, whereby the self-assembling process is realized via a jamming transition.Entities:
Year: 2017 PMID: 28959006 PMCID: PMC5620065 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00538-z
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Nat Commun ISSN: 2041-1723 Impact factor: 14.919
Fig. 1Packing and jamming of microbombs within micro-confinement. a Illustration of microbombs consisting of an isobutane core and a polymeric shell, which explode and release the isobutane upon heating. b Spontaneous packing and jamming of microbombs inside microwells at a temperature above T g. c Photos of the microbombs in a vial before and after the volumetric expansion. d–g Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the microbombs before (d) and after (f) explosion, and the corresponding transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showing the shell thickness before (e) and after (g) explosion
Fig. 2Thermal expansion behaviors of the microbombs. a Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curve of the microbombs, showing the glass transition temperature (T g) ~ 97.2 °C. b Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) curves of the microbombs obtained at different heating rates. c, d Representative isothermal responses of microbombs at different temperatures: c weight loss behavior and d volumetric expansion
Fig. 3Experimental procedures for the topographic confinement of microbombs. The corresponding optical images are presented underneath. a Introduction of the microbomb solution on top of the predefined microwells. b Water evaporation and receding meniscus processes to guide the microbomb assembly within the microwells. c Anchored microbombs within the microwell array. Optical images illustrate various possible packing combinations of the number of seeds and the shapes of wells. d Formation of micro-clusters as a result of dense packing and monolithic jamming of the expanded microbombs in confinement. e Release of the clusters utilizing a piece of dissolvable tape
Fig. 4Real-time tracking of the micro-cluster formation. a SEM images and the corresponding illustrations of the clusters formed at different temperatures. b, c Optical images and corresponding illustrations of the trajectories of a pair of microbombs that are separated (b) and paired (c) upon explosion in square confinement. d, e Optical images and the corresponding illustrations of circular confinement of two separated (d) and paired (e) microbombs. f, g Plots of center-to-center distances between two constituent cells as a function of time normalized by the time required to reach the convergent center-to-center distance within square (f) and circular (g) confinement
Fig. 5A library of topographic clusters. a SEM images of the clusters and the corresponding illustrations. The number of cleavages of each cell corresponds to the number of the initial seeds. b, c Close-up SEM images of the triangular prisms (b) and four-cell cubes (c). The last image of each group shows the cavity within the clusters, for which they were cut by the FIB
Fig. 6Hierarchical leveling on the topographic clusters. a SEM image of a single-cell microbomb with nanoscallops on the sidewall. b Nanoimprinting on the surface of the cluster particle to achieve further hierarchy. c, d SEM images of the nanoline mold (600 nm line width, c) and the clusters imprinted with nanolines on top (d). e, f SEM images of the mold of hole patterns (e) and the complementary hierarchical clusters with nano-pillars (600 nm in diameter and 600 nm in height) after the explosion (f)
Fig. 7Topographical complexity of micro-clusters. a Illustration of the topographical complexity of the clusters as a result of the boundary shapes, the cleavages, the edge profiles, and the hierarchy. b–e Exemplary SEM images of the inverse pyramidal confinement and three-dimensional clusters formed within the micro-pyramids