Self-Assembling Polymer-Directed Hierarchical Porous Structures for Low Carbon Solutions

Hierarchically porous structured materials with multifunctional properties and higher order dimensional complexities are highly desirable for many applications. In this talk I will describe our recent synthesis approaches of directed–self-assembly with block copolymers to generate well-organized porous hierarchically ordered structures of amorphous polymers/carbon, polycrystalline ceramics as well as single-crystal semiconductors. New understanding and control in the formation pathways of self-assembled materials via rapid nonequilibrium synthesis routes will be discussed. Such advanced functional self-assembly-derived materials are of fundamental and technological relevance for emerging low-carbon technologies, e.g., solid-state carbon dioxide adsorbents, separation, energy conversion and storage.