Liquid-Templating Aerogels

Seyyed Alireza Hashemi; Ahmadreza Ghaffarkhah; Milad Goodarzi; Amir Nazemi; Gabriel Banvillet; Abbas S Milani; Masoud Soroush; Orlando J Rojas; Seeram Ramakrishna; Stefan Wuttke; Thomas P Russell; Milad Kamkar; Mohammad Arjmand

doi:10.1002/adma.202302826

Liquid-Templating Aerogels

Adv Mater. 2023 Oct;35(42):e2302826. doi: 10.1002/adma.202302826. Epub 2023 Sep 4.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Nanomaterials and Polymer Nanocomposites Laboratory, School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7, Canada.
² Composites Research Network-Okanagan Laboratory, School of Engineering, University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7, Canada.
³ Bioproducts Institute, Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Department of Chemistry and Department of Wood Science, 2360 East Mall, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z3, Canada.
⁴ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Nanofibers and Nanotechnology, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore, 119077, Singapore.
⁶ Basque Centre for Materials, Applications & Nanostructures (BCMaterials), Bld. Martina Casiano, 3rd. Floor UPV/EHU Science Park Barrio Sarriena s/n, Leioa, 48940, Spain.
⁷ IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, 48013, Spain.
⁸ Polymer Science and Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 120 Governors Drive, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
⁹ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
¹⁰ Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan.
¹¹ Multi-scale Materials Design Center, Department of Chemical Engineering, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada.

PMID: 37562445
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202302826

Abstract

Modern materials science has witnessed the era of advanced fabrication methods to engineer functionality from the nano- to macroscales. Versatile fabrication and additive manufacturing methods are developed, but the ability to design a material for a given application is still limited. Here, a novel strategy that enables target-oriented manufacturing of ultra-lightweight aerogels with on-demand characteristics is introduced. The process relies on controllable liquid templating through interfacial complexation to generate tunable, stimuli-responsive 3D-structured (multiphase) filamentous liquid templates. The methodology involves nanoscale chemistry and microscale assembly of nanoparticles (NPs) at liquid-liquid interfaces to produce hierarchical macroscopic aerogels featuring multiscale porosity, ultralow density (3.05-3.41 mg cm^-3 ), and high compressibility (90%) combined with elastic resilience and instant shape recovery. The challenges are overcome facing ultra-lightweight aerogels, including poor mechanical integrity and the inability to form predefined 3D constructs with on-demand functionality, for a multitude of applications. The controllable nature of the coined methodology enables tunable electromagnetic interference shielding with high specific shielding effectiveness (39 893 dB cm² g^-1 ), and one of the highest-ever reported oil-absorption capacities (487 times the initial weight of aerogel for chloroform), to be obtained. These properties originate from the engineerable nature of liquid templating, pushing the boundaries of lightweight materials to systematic function design and applications.

Keywords: electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding; filamentous aerogels; interfacial assembly; nanoparticle assembly; oil absorption.

Abstract

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