Probing Nanostructural Materials
EMSL Project ID
3271
Abstract
Research is focused on understanding and modifying the key molecular interactions at interfaces that direct growth of three-dimensional ordered nanoarchitectures. Materials confined to these small dimensions show characteristics that often contrast with bulk materials of nominally the same phase and chemical composition. Understanding how the attendant structure and local chemistry interact to enhance these properties in a material is the focus of this work. Our previous studies have shown that the nano- or meso-architectures which evolve in templated growth of porous ceramic phases can be probed by a variety of 13C NMR NMR techniques. We have pioneered in study of surfactant ordering at the interfaces using chemical shift, relaxation time measurements, and two-dimensional proton wide line separation (2D WISE) 1H ? 13C NMR. The information on the conformation and dynamics of templated agents in as-synthesized ceramic materials can be obtained from the NMR studies, providing insight into how the templated polymer or supramolecules are evolved into the final mesophase ceramics. Since the template synthesis of mesoporous material involves the interaction between the inorganic precursor such as hydrolyzed TEOS and the organized micellar solution of templating agents, the interfacial bonding can be probed using both 13C and 29Si NMR techniques. Therefore, the templating mechanism of our novel templates can be totally elucidated using modern spectroscopic techniques including both SANS and NMR in combination with N2 adsorption, TEM and x-ray diffraction. We are requesting both the 300 and 500 MHz NMR spectrometers for this proposed study.
Project Details
Project type
Capability Research
Start Date
2003-05-01
End Date
2004-04-09
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator