Structured Liquids with pH-Triggered Reconfigurability

Caili Huang; Zhiwei Sun; Mengmeng Cui; Feng Liu; Brett A Helms; Thomas P Russell

doi:10.1002/adma.201600691

Structured Liquids with pH-Triggered Reconfigurability

Adv Mater. 2016 Aug;28(31):6612-8. doi: 10.1002/adma.201600691. Epub 2016 May 23.

Authors

Caili Huang^{1

2}, Zhiwei Sun², Mengmeng Cui², Feng Liu¹, Brett A Helms³, Thomas P Russell^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Material Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
² Polymer Science and Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts, 120 Governors Drive, Conte Center for Polymer Research, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
³ The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ WPI-Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan.

PMID: 27214196
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201600691

Abstract

Through pH-tuning of electrostatic interactions between polymer ligands and nanoparticles at structured-liquid interfaces, liquid droplets can be directed between a jammed nonequilibrium state and a dynamic reconfigurable state. The nanoparticle-surfactant dynamics highly depend on the pH, so that the liquids can be structured using an external field and under variation of pH, or alternatively being realized by remote photo-triggering.

Keywords: interfacial colloidal assembly; jammed matter; nonequilibrium state; structured liquids.