Summary
"The chiral self-assembly of nanoscale building blocks offers a scalable route to functional materials, but understanding and controlling this process is a persistent challenge. A notable example is cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), elongated nanoparticles extracted from natural cellulose that assemble into a cholesteric liquid crystal phase in aqueous suspension. This helicoidal self-organisation can be preserved into the solid state to create structurally coloured films, offering a sustainable way to produce next-generation pigments and colourants. However, the CNC cholesteric phase is always found to be left-handed due to the presence of ""bundles"", a sub-population of CNCs that act as colloidal chiral dopants and induce left-handed ordering. Inspired by the naturally-occuring CNC bundles, this project aims to produce cellulose polycrystals (CPCs), a new class of clustered nanoparticles produced by the aggregation of CNCs in the presence of a chiral ""glue"" provided by hemicelluloses. These CPCs will then be used as synthetic chiral dopants to induce a right-handed cholesteric phase in CNCs suspensions for the first time. This inversion of the handedness of CNC self-assembly will result in films that reflect RCP light in the visible range, enabling the creation of structurally-coloured materials with near-ideal optical performance. These findings will deepen our understanding of chiral colloidal self-assembly and open up new avenues of enquiry for research on bio-sourced nanomaterials."
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| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101154876 |
| Start date: | 01-05-2024 |
| End date: | 30-04-2026 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | - 173 847,00 Euro |
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Original description
"The chiral self-assembly of nanoscale building blocks offers a scalable route to functional materials, but understanding and controlling this process is a persistent challenge. A notable example is cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), elongated nanoparticles extracted from natural cellulose that assemble into a cholesteric liquid crystal phase in aqueous suspension. This helicoidal self-organisation can be preserved into the solid state to create structurally coloured films, offering a sustainable way to produce next-generation pigments and colourants. However, the CNC cholesteric phase is always found to be left-handed due to the presence of ""bundles"", a sub-population of CNCs that act as colloidal chiral dopants and induce left-handed ordering. Inspired by the naturally-occuring CNC bundles, this project aims to produce cellulose polycrystals (CPCs), a new class of clustered nanoparticles produced by the aggregation of CNCs in the presence of a chiral ""glue"" provided by hemicelluloses. These CPCs will then be used as synthetic chiral dopants to induce a right-handed cholesteric phase in CNCs suspensions for the first time. This inversion of the handedness of CNC self-assembly will result in films that reflect RCP light in the visible range, enabling the creation of structurally-coloured materials with near-ideal optical performance. These findings will deepen our understanding of chiral colloidal self-assembly and open up new avenues of enquiry for research on bio-sourced nanomaterials."Status
SIGNEDCall topic
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01Update Date
06-11-2024
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