Molecular Packing in Double Gyroid Cubic Phases Revealed <i>via</i> Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering

ORAL

Abstract

The bicontinuous double gyroid phase is one of the nature’s most symmetric and complex structures, the electron density map of which was established long ago. By utilizing small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), resonant soft X-ray scattering (RSoXS) at the carbon K-edge and model-dependent tensor based scattering theory, we have not only elucidated morphology but also identified molecular packing in the double gyroid phases formed by molecules with different shapes, i.e. rod-like vs taper-shaped, thus validating some of the hypothetical packing models and disproving others. The spatial variation of molecular orientation through the channel junctions in the double gyroid phase can be either continuous in the case of anisotropic channels or discontinuous in the case of isotropic channels depending on the molecular structure and shape.

*We acknowledge the Advanced Light Source supported by the Director of the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231, National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21761132033 and 21774099), Science and Technology Agency of Shaanxi Province (No. 2016KW-050 and 2018KWZ-03), National Science Centre (Poland) no. 2016/22/A/ST5/00319, Slovenian Research Agency-no. P1-0055.

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Presenters

  • Chenhui Zhu

    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Authors

  • Yu Cao

    • State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Shaanxi International Research Center for Soft Matter, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong

  • Mohamed Alaasar

    • Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

  • Asritha Nallapaneni

    • Department of Polymer Engineering, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325 USA

  • Miroslaw Salamonczyk

    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Peter Marinko

    • University of Maribor, Koroška 160, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

  • Ewa Gorecka

    • Faculty of Chemistry, University of Warsaw, Zwirki i Wigury 101, 02-089 Warsaw, Poland

  • Feng Liu

    • State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Shaanxi International Research Center for Soft Matter, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong

  • Natasa Vaupotic

    • University of Maribor, Koroška 160, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

  • Chenhui Zhu

    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory