Persistent Micelle Templates Reveal Nanoscale Cause-and-Effect
Speaker: Morgan Stefik
Affiliation: University of South Carolina
Date: February 21st
Abstract: Few aspects are as prevalent and important to energy conversion and storage as the dimension control of porous nanomaterial architectures. The study of nanostructure-property-performance relationships has been broadly limited by access to well-defined nanomaterials with independent control over the pore and wall dimensions. This historic limitation is partially due to reliance upon equilibrating self-assembly processes that obscure nanostructure cause-and-effect since the resulting sample series convolve multiple spatial variables. Persistent micelle templates (PMT) are a recent nanofabrication platform based upon kinetic micelle control where the pore diameter and wall thickness are independently tailored. 1 This approach enables investigations “one-variable at a time” with seamless access from mesoto-macroporous materials and a remarkable ~2 Å precision of size tuning. Recent energy device research2,3 enabled by PMT will be presented where these nanomaterials provide a unique perspective. For example, PMT-materials were the first used to reveal the diffusive rate limiting process for intercalation pseudocapacitance in T-Nb2O5. These data supported the critical re-evaluation of prevailing perspectives about the nature of intercalation pseudocapacitance. Our corresponding new model deconvolves how synthetic choices affect both surface and bulk processes and furthermore explain the long-standing “blurry” continuum between capacitor-like and battery-like behaviors.2
1) Stefik, M. Single-Variable Porous Nanomaterial Series from Polymer Structure Directing Agents. Journal of Materials Research 2022, 37, 25-42.
2) van den Bergh, W.; Stefik, M. Understanding Rapid Intercalation Materials One Parameter at a Time. Advanced Functional Materials 2022, 32, 2204126.
3) van den Bergh, W.; Lokupitiya, H.; Vest, N.; Reid, B.; Guldin, S.; Stefik, M. Tunable Isomorphic Architectures of T-Nb2O5 Quantify Nanostructure Dependence of Intercalation Pseudocapacitance upon Diffusive Processes. Advanced Functional Materials 2021, 31, 2007826, 1-11.