In a double-gyroid, two materials (pictured in the image as red and blue) thoroughly interpenetrate each other. Image: Reddy at al., 10.1038/s41467-022-30343-2.Polymer scientists at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst have solved a longstanding mystery surrounding a nanoscale structure, formed by collections of molecules, called a double-gyroid. This shape is one of the most desirable for materials scientists, and has a wide range of applications; but until now, a predictable understanding of how these shapes form has eluded researchers. The scientists report their discovery in a paper in Nature Communications.
“There’s a beautiful interplay between pure mathematics and materials science,” says Greg Grason, the paper’s senior author and a professor of polymer science and engineering at UMass Amherst. “Our work investigates how materials self-assemble into natural forms.”
These forms can take many shapes. They can be simple, like a layer, cylinder or sphere. “A bit like soap films,” adds Michael Dimitriyev, a postdoctoral researcher in polymer science and engineering at UMass Amherst, and one of the paper’s co-authors. “There’s an intuitive understanding of the shapes that molecules, such as those in soap, can build. What we’ve done is to reveal the hidden geometry that allows polymers to assume the double-gyroid form.”
What does a double-gyroid look like? It’s not intuitive. “They’re something in between a layer and a cylinder,” explains Abhiram Reddy, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, who completed this research as part of his graduate study at UMass Amherst.
In other words, imagine a flat piece of material – a layer – and then twist it up into a saddle-shaped layer that fits into a cubic box in such a way that its surface area stays as small as possible. That’s a gyroid. A double-gyroid is when a second material, also twisted into a gyroid, fills in the gaps in the first gyroid.
Each gyroidal material forms a network of tubes that interpenetrates the other. Together, they form an enormously complex material that is both symmetrical on all sides, like many crystals, yet pervaded by labyrinthine channels, each formed from different molecular units. Because this material is a hybrid of two gyroids, it can be engineered to have contradictory properties.
Double-gyroids exist in nature and have long been observed. Yet, until now, no one has quite figured out how chain molecules known as block copolymers know how to form double-gyroids. Reddy and his co-authors built upon a previous theoretical model, adding a hefty dose of thermodynamics and a new approach to thinking about the packing problem – or how best to fill a finite container with material – borrowed from computational geometry and known as the medial map.
Since the copolymers need to stretch to occupy every part of the self-assembled structure, understanding this formation requires knowing how the molecules ‘measure the middle’ of shapes – like gyroids – that are far more complex than spheres and cylinders. Not only does the team’s updated theoretical model explain the puzzling formation of double-gyroids, but it could also help understand how this packing problem works in a much broader array of self-assembled superstructures, such as double-diamonds and double-primitives, or even structures that have yet to be discovered.
The researchers, who were funded by the US Department of Energy, next plan to collaborate with synthetic chemists to begin refining their theory with experimental data. The end goal is to be able to engineer a wide variety of materials that take advantage of the double-gyroid’s structure and can help advance a wide range of technologies, from rechargeable batteries to light-reflecting coatings.
This story is adapted from material from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.