Melville Lecture 1: Stimuli-Responsive Smart Soft Materials abricated under Nonequilibrated Conditions

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• Professor Takuzo Aida, University of Tokyo 
• Tuesday 07 February 2017, 16:00-17:00
• Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Sharon Connor.

Machine technology frequently puts magnetic or electrostatic repulsive forces to practical use, as in maglev trains, vehicle suspensions or non-contact bearings. In contrast, materials design overwhelmingly focuses on attractive interactions, such as in the many advanced polymer-based composites, where inorganic fillers interact with a polymer matrix to improve mechanical properties. However, articular cartilage strikingly illustrates how electrostatic repulsion can be harnessed to achieve unparalleled functional efficiency: it permits virtually frictionless mechanical motion within joints, even under high compression. Here we describe a composite hydrogel with anisotropic mechanical properties dominated by electrostatic repulsion between negatively charged unilamellar titanate nanosheets embedded within it. Crucial to the behaviour of this hydrogel is the serendipitous discovery of cofacial nanosheet alignment in aqueous colloidal dispersions subjected to a strong magnetic field, which maximizes electrostatic repulsion6 and thereby induces a quasi-crystalline structural ordering over macroscopic length scales and with uniformly large face-to-face nanosheet separation. We fix this transiently induced structural order by transforming the dispersion into a hydrogel using lighttriggered in situ vinyl polymerization. The resultant hydrogel, containing charged inorganic structures that align cofacially in a magnetic flux, deforms easily under shear forces applied parallel to the embedded nanosheets yet resists compressive forces applied orthogonally. We anticipate that the concept of embedding anisotropic repulsive electrostatics within a composite material, inspired by articular cartilage, will open up new possibilities for developing soft materials with unusual functions. More recently, we reported a highly oriented thin film of a carbon nitride polymer, which shows anomalous mechanical responses to minute fluctuations in the ambient humidity.

References [1] Q. Wang, J. L. Mynar, M. Yoshida, E. Lee, M. Lee, K. Okuro, K. Kinbara, and T. Aida, Nature 2010, 463, 339–343. [2] M. Liu, Y. Ishida, Y. Ebina, T. Sasaki, and T. Aida, Nature Commun. 2013, 4, 2029 [3] M. Liu, Y. Ishida, Y. Ebina, T. Sasaki, T. Hikima, M. Takata, and T. Aida, Nature 2015, 517, 68–72. [4] Y.-S. Kim, M. Liu, Y. Ishida, Y. Ebina, T. Sasaki, T. Hikima, M. Takata, and T. Aida, Nature Mat. 2015, 14, 1002–1007. [5] H. Arazoe, D. Miyajima, K. Akaike, F. Araoka, E. Sato, T. Hikima, M. Kawamoto, T. Aida, Nature Mat. 2016

This talk is part of the Materials Chemistry Research Interest Group series.

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