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

• storage modulus; Introduction Functional adaptation through porous structures is widely present in nature [1]. Natural structures are often made of hierarchical porous networks, serving mainly for passive mechanical functions [1][2][3], but also for capillary channels and membranes [1]. Nature offers

• 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