Oak Ridge Today

HED: Silica ‘spiky screws’ could enhance industrial coatings, additive manufacturing

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It took marine sponges millions of years to perfect their spike-like structures, but research mimicking these formations may soon alter how industrial coatings and 3-D printed objects are produced.

A molecular process developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory paves the way for improved silica structure design by introducing microscopic, segmented screw-like spikes that can more effectively bond materials for commercial use.

The study, conducted by Jaswinder Sharma and his colleagues Panos Datskos and David Cullen, has been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Authors said other applications of the screw-like spikes could include coatings for eyeglasses, television screens, commercial transportation, and even self-cleaning windows and roofs in rural and urban environments.

Created by emulsion droplets applied to a silica particle’s surface, the new, segmented spikes offer an alternative tool for material scientists and engineers that can better maintain and fuse bonds within a variety of microstructures. [Read more…]

Novel ORNL technique enables air-stable water droplet networks

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Water Droplet

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a method to create air-stable water droplet networks that are valuable for applications in biological sensing and membrane research. (Image credit: Kyle Kuykendall)

 

A simple new technique to form interlocking beads of water in ambient conditions could prove valuable for applications in biological sensing, membrane research, and harvesting water from fog.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a method to create air-stable water droplet networks known as droplet interface bilayers. These interconnected water droplets have many roles in biological research because their interfaces simulate cell membranes. Cumbersome fabrication methods, however, have limited their use.

“The way they’ve been made since their inception is that two water droplets are formed in an oil bath then brought together while they’re submerged in oil,” said ORNL’s Pat Collier, who led the team’s study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Otherwise they would just pop like soap bubbles.”

Instead of injecting water droplets into an oil bath, the ORNL research team experimented with placing the droplets on a superhydrophobic surface infused with a coating of oil. The droplets aligned side by side without merging. [Read more…]

ORNL devises recipe to fine-tune silica rod diameters

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By controlling the temperature of silica rods as they grow, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could be setting the stage for advances in anti-reflective solar cells, computer monitors, TV screens, eye glasses, and more.

The goal of fabricating fixed-size one-dimensional silica structures and being able to precisely control the diameter during growth has long eluded scientists. Now, Panos Datskos and Jaswinder Sharma have demonstrated what they describe as the addressable local control of diameter of each segment of the silica rod.

“In nature, many intricate structures develop and grow in response to their environments,” said Sharma, a Wigner Fellow and corresponding author of the Angewandte Chemie International Edition paper that outlines the process. “For example, in addition to genotype, shell shape is also controlled by the local environment in many oysters and scallops.” [Read more…]