Method to Make Crack-Free Carbon Structures While Avoiding Shrinkage and Deformation

A method to make micropatterned carbon structures with pre-designed size and shape, avoiding shrinkage and deformation.
Problem:
Pyrolysis is a chemical process that involves the thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures in an inert atmosphere.

Applying pyrolysis to polymer templates can be used to fabricate micropatterned carbon structures. Doing so, however, is challenging because the polymer tends to shrink by up to 50% and undergo significant deformation during pyrolysis.
Solution:
Using jammed emulsion gels (Bijels) as a supporting scaffold helps prevent macroscopic shrinkage and deformation during pyrolysis, and thus enables fabrication of micro-structured carbon materials with pre-designed size and shape.
Technology:
The bijel's jammed silica nanoparticle layer acts as a supporting scaffold, and since the plugged silica nanoparticle layer does not undergo any shrinkage at this temperature, it acts to preserve the original structure. Subsequent removal of the silica nanoparticles results in high surface area micropores.
Advantages:

Make micropatterned carbon structures with pre-designed size and shape.
Crack-free fabrication of micro-structured carbon materials.
The resulting carbon structure has no obvious shrinkage and deformation.
Bijels act as a scaffold that retains the original structure.
The pore size of bijel can be adjustable from hundreds of nanometers to tens of microns thus creating adjustable carbon structure pore size.

Stage of Development:

Concept
Proof of Concept
Bench Prototype

Cross-sectional SEM images of polymerized bijel before and after pyrolysis and the microvoids created by the removal of jammed silica nanoparticles
Intellectual Property: