Bio-inspired micro-to-nanoporous polymers with tunable stiffness

• Julia Syurik,
• Ruth Schwaiger,
• Prerna Sudera,
• Stephan Weyand,
• Siegbert Johnsen,
• Gabriele Wiegand and
• Hendrik Hölscher

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 906–914, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.92

• analysis of the pore structure. Therefore, our approach represents a non-chemical way to tune the elastic properties and their local variation for a broad range of polymers by adjusting the pore size gradient. Keywords: biomimetics; polymeric materials; supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2); tunable

• generation of nanoporous polymeric foams accessible [17]. Saturation in supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) [18] is a well-established method for the fabrication of polymeric foams. The process of pore nucleation by saturation in SC-CO2 consists of three basic steps [14][19]: (i) mixing of a polymer and SC