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Advancing the Bijel Chemical Library: Expanding the Spectrum of Functional Materials

Abstract

This thesis presents an engineered approach to create bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels (bijels), achieved through the kinetic arrest of temperature-induced spinodal decomposition within partially miscible binary fluids. The subsequent incorporation of these spinodal structures into 3D porous polymers forms the basis of bijel templated materials (BTMs), which offer distinct advantages over traditional porous materials. These advantages encompass tunable domain size, enhanced structural integrity, continuous morphology, and deformability. Initial methods to solidify bicontinuous architectures into interpenetrating porous scaffolds faced limitations in selecting suitable polymers, creating different geometries, and elongated processing times. To address these challenges, a new technique called intrinsically polymerizable bijels (IPBs) was developed, where one of the bicontinuous phases is a monomer. The aim of this research is to create a degradable BTM, serving as a bicontinuous mold, allowing for filling the void space with a polymerizable material followed by matrix degradation. Successful synthesis of disulfide diacrylate was achieved high yields where partial miscibility of 1,2-pentanediol was found to have a transition temperature below room temperature. By experimentally determining the coexistence curve based on fluids miscibility, both the critical mass fraction and critical transition temperature were identified. Neutrally wetting nanoparticles were synthesized, and their surface was functionalized with various silanizing agents to optimize consistent results for proper bijel formation. Fine-tuning of polymerization and quenching conditions led to the production of a degradable porous BTM sheet. This process introduces a bijel templated invertible mold (BTIM) to expand the spectrum of functional materials with spinodal microstructures, with potential applications as porous coatings to enhance material and surface functionalization and interactions with its biological interface

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