A multiscale approach towards mesostructured super-porous material design - MULIMAT

MULTIMAT addresses (1) the industrial and societal need for affordable materials that have a highly defined and large porosity together with the required (mechanical, chemical and/or thermal) robustness for application in thermal insulation, catalysts, fuel cells and oil spill remediation and (2) the scientific need to better understand the mechanisms underlying the assembly of small building blocks into larger structures that are ordered hierarchally across multiple scales ("multiscale assembly"). Together this will contribute to achieving MULTIMAT's future aim: Understanding and ultimately steering the bottom-up construction of materials with complex hierarchical structures.

In Manchester, we are investigating the assembly and silicification of macromolecular building blocks. In particular, we are applying molecular simulations to investigate the self-assembly of block copolymers and the role of silicates in determining the equilibrium structures.