Block copolymers are recognized as a valuable platform for creating nanostructured materials. Morphologies formed by block copolymer self-assembly can be transferred into a wide range of inorganic materials, enabling applications including energy storage and metamaterials. However, imaging of the underlying, often complex, nanostructures in large volumes has remained a challenge, limiting progress in materials development. Taking advantage of recent advances in X-ray nanotomography, we noninvasively imaged exceptionally large volumes of nanostructured hybrid materials at high resolution, revealing a single-diamond morphology in a triblock terpolymer–gold composite network. This morphology, which is ubiquitous in nature, has so far remained elusive in block copolymer-derived materials, despite its potential to create materials with large photonic bandgaps. The discovery was made possible by the precise analysis of distortions in a large volume of the self-assembled diamond network, which are difficult to unambiguously assess using traditional characterization tools. We anticipate that high-resolution X-ray nanotomography, which allows imaging of much larger sample volumes than electron-based tomography, will become a powerful tool for the quantitative analysis of complex nanostructures and that structures such as the triblock terpolymer-directed single diamond will enable the generation of advanced multicomponent composites with hitherto unknown property profiles.

中文翻译：

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由 X 射线纳米断层扫描得出的嵌段共聚物定向单金刚石混合结构


嵌段共聚物被认为是创建纳米结构材料的宝贵平台。嵌段共聚物自组装形成的形态可以转移到各种无机材料中，从而实现包括能量存储和超材料在内的应用。然而，大体积的底层（通常是复杂的）纳米结构的成像仍然是一个挑战，限制了材料开发的进展。利用 X 射线纳米断层扫描的最新进展，我们以高分辨率对大量纳米结构混合材料进行非侵入性成像，揭示了三嵌段三元共聚物-金复合网络中的单金刚石形态。尽管这种形态在自然界中普遍存在，但迄今为止在嵌段共聚物衍生材料中仍然难以捉摸，尽管它具有创造具有大光子带隙的材料的潜力。这一发现是通过对大量自组装金刚石网络中的扭曲进行精确分析而实现的，而使用传统的表征工具很难明确评估这些扭曲。我们预计，高分辨率 X 射线纳米断层扫描技术可以比电子断层扫描技术对更大的样品体积进行成像，它将成为定量分析复杂纳米结构的强大工具，并且三嵌段三元聚合物定向单金刚石等结构将成为定量分析复杂纳米结构的强大工具。能够生成具有迄今为止未知的性能特征的先进多组分复合材料。