Shape changing plastics feature at Synchrotron

A paper co-authored by IFM’s Lingxue Kong and a joint team from IFM and CSIRO has been selected as a highlight for display in the National Centre for Synchrotron Science.

The paper, which featured on the cover of the leading materials journal Soft Matter in 2012 features work on structure retention in organic polymers.

Prof Lingxue Kong said that persuading organic polymers to take on the shape of a hexagonal lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) structure could lead to many potential applications in areas such as membranes, tissue engineering, catalysis, and electrodes.

“Dealing with the surface tension forces associated with surfactant removal and drying is a major challenge in the production of well-aligned polymer nanostructures,” he said.

Lingxue and his team successfully created polymers with the desired hexagonal LLC structure by controlling the surface tension during drying of cross-linked poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) hydrogels formed from a dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB)/water system.

The display features journal covers devoted to Australian Synchrotron related papers, along with a short plain language explanation of the work and its significance. The displays will be on show for the Australian Synchrotron open day on Sunday 13 October 2013.

More information: lingxue.kong@deakin.edu.au