Controlling Microstructure of Metal and Polymer Aerogels via Advanced Templating Approaches

气凝胶是一种高度多孔的纳米结构材料，在储能、(电)催化和传感等先进技术中具有巨大的潜力。这个博士生将开发新的材料化学方法来设计气凝胶，并将微观结构控制提升到一个新的水平，这是目前通过现有方法无法实现的。为此，该项目将利用微流体和纳米碳科学的最新进展，改善低密度金属和聚合物气凝胶制造的总体合成控制。由此产生的新气凝胶材料将使用先进的技术进行表征，重点是通过电子显微镜和X射线断层扫描对气凝胶微结构进行最先进的3D表征。最有希望的气凝胶材料将在可持续发展相关的模型反应(如电催化二氧化碳还原)中作为(电)催化剂进行测试，以研究基本的结构-功能关系。该博士项目将与共同资助该研究的商业合作伙伴密切合作。博士项目还将利用利兹布拉格材料研究中心(电子显微镜和光谱学)和亨利-罗伊斯研究所(X射线CT)最先进的材料表征实验室。

Aerogels are highly-porous, nanostructured materials with great potential in advanced technologies including energy storage, (electro)catalysis, and sensing. This PhD studentship will develop new materials chemistry approaches to engineer aerogels with a new level of micro-structural control, currently not available through existing methodologies. To this end, the project will exploit recent advances in microfluidics and nanocarbon science to improve overall synthetic control in the fabrication of low-density metal and polymer aerogels. The resulting new aerogel materials will be characterized using advanced techniques, with focus on state-of-the-art 3D characterization of aerogel microstructure via electron microscopy and X-ray tomography. The most promising aerogel materials will be tested as (electro)catalysts in sustainability-related model reactions (such as electrocatalytic CO2 reduction) in order to study fundamental structure-function relationships.The PhD project will be run in close collaboration with a commercial partner who is co-funding the research. The PhD project will also make use of state-of-the-art materials characterization laboratories at the Bragg Centre for Materials Research at Leeds (electron microscopy and spectroscopy) and the Henry-Royce Institute (X-ray CT).