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    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    Hierarchical supercrystalline nanocomposites through the self-assembly of organically-modified ceramic nanoparticles
    Biomaterials often display outstanding combinations of mechanical properties thanks to their hierarchical structuring, which occurs through a dynamically and biologically controlled growth and self-assembly of their main constituents, typically mineral and protein. However, it is still challenging to obtain this ordered multiscale structural organization in synthetic 3D-nanocomposite materials. Herein, we report a new bottom-up approach for the synthesis of macroscale hierarchical nanocomposite materials in a single step. By controlling the content of organic phase during the self-assembly of monodisperse organically-modified nanoparticles (iron oxide with oleyl phosphate), either purely supercrystalline or hierarchically structured supercrystalline nanocomposite materials are obtained. Beyond a critical concentration of organic phase, a hierarchical material is consistently formed. In such a hierarchical material, individual organically-modified ceramic nanoparticles (Level 0) self-assemble into supercrystals in face-centered cubic superlattices (Level 1), which in turn form granules of up to hundreds of micrometers (Level 2). These micrometric granules are the constituents of the final mm-sized material. This approach demonstrates that the local concentration of organic phase and nano-building blocks during self-assembly controls the final material's microstructure, and thus enables the fine-tuning of inorganic-organic nanocomposites' mechanical behavior, paving the way towards the design of novel high-performance structural materials.
    Publicationtype: Journal Article
    Scopus© Citations 22  391  430
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    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    Photonic materials for high-temperature applications: synthesis and characterization by X-ray ptychographic tomography
    Photonic materials for high-temperature applications need to withstand temperatures usually higher than 1000 °C, whilst keeping their function. When exposed to high temperatures, such nanostructured materials are prone to detrimental morphological changes, however the structure evolution pathway of photonic materials and its correlation with the loss of material's function is not yet fully understood. Here we use high-resolution ptychographic X-ray computed tomography (PXCT) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to investigate the structural changes in mullite inverse opal photonic crystals produced by a very-low-temperature (95 °C) atomic layer deposition (ALD) super-cycle process. The 3D structural changes caused by the high-temperature exposure were quantified and associated with the distinct structural features of the ceramic photonic crystals. Other than observed in photonic crystals produced via powder colloidal suspensions or sol-gel infiltration, at high temperatures of 1400 °C we detected a mass transport direction from the nano pores to the shells. We relate these different structure evolution pathways to the presence of hollow vertexes in our ALD-based inverse opal photonic crystals. Although the periodically ordered structure is distorted after sintering, the mullite inverse opal photonic crystal presents a photonic stopgap even after heat treatment at 1400 °C for 100 h.
    Publicationtype: Journal Article
    Scopus© Citations 20  334  464
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    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    Dataset of ptychographic X-ray computed tomography of inverse opal photonic crystals produced by atomic layer deposition
    This data article describes the detailed parameters for synthesizing mullite inverse opal photonic crystals via Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), as well as the detailed image analysis routine used to interpret the data obtained by the measurement of such photonic crystals, before and after the heat treatment, via Ptychographic X-ray Computed Tomography (PXCT). The data presented in this article are related to the research article by Furlan and co-authors entitled "Photonic materials for high-temperature applications: Synthesis and characterization by X-ray ptychographic tomography" (Furlan et al., 2018). The data include detailed information about the ALD super-cycle process to generate the ternary oxides inside a photonic crystal template, the raw data from supporting characterization techniques, as well as the full dataset obtained from PXCT. All the data herein described is publicly available in a Mendeley Data archive "Dataset of synthesis and characterization by PXCT of ALD-based mullite inverse opal photonic crystals" located at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/zn49dsk7x6/1 for any academic, educational, or research purposes.
    Publicationtype: Data Paper
    Scopus© Citations 4  373  347