Micrometric Monodisperse Solid Foams as Complete Photonic Bandgap Materials

Ilham Maimouni (1) , Maryam Morvaridi (1) , Maria Russo (1, 2) , Gianluc Lui (3) , Konstantin Morozov (4) , Janine Cossy (5) , Marian Florescu (3) , Matthieu Labousse (6) , Patrick Tabeling (1)

1 MMN - Laboratoire Microfluidique, MEMS, Nanostructures
2 Molecular, Macromolecular Chemistry and Materials, ESPCI Paris, CNRS, PSL University,
3 Advanced Technology Institute and Department of Physics
4 Department of Chemical Engineering
5 Laboratoire de Chimie Oraganique
6 Gulliver (UMR 7083)

Solid foams with micrometric pores are used in different fields (filtering, 3D cell culture, etc.), but today, controlling their foam geometry at the pore level, their internal structure, and the monodispersity, along with their mechanical properties, is still a challenge. Existing attempts to create such foams suffer either from slow speed or size limitations (above 80 μm). In this work, by using a temperature-regulated microfluidic process, 3D solid foams with highly monodisperse open pores (PDI lower than 5%), with sizes ranging from 5 to 400 μm and stiffnesses spanning 2 orders of magnitude, are created for the first time. These features open the way for exciting applications, in cell culture, filtering, optics, etc. Here, the focus is set on photonics. Numerically, these foams are shown to open a 3D complete photonic bandgap, with a critical index of 2.80, thus compatible with the use of rutile TiO2. In the field of photonics, such structures represent the first physically realizable self-assembled FCC (face-centered cubic) structure that possesses this functionality.

Mots clés: 3D solid foams; self-assembly; microfluidics; polymers; photonic band gaps

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Optique / photonique; Optique [physics.optics]

Ilham Maimouni, Maryam Morvaridi, Maria Russo, Gianluc Lui, Konstantin Morozov, et al.. Micrometric Monodisperse Solid Foams as Complete Photonic Bandgap Materials. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2020, ⟨10.1021/acsami.0c04031⟩. ⟨hal-02892582⟩