DM Xpress – Mesoscale Assembly in Porous Liquids

Porous liquids are a class of materials that combine fluidity with some of the properties of microporous solids, such as high and selective uptake of other molecules. Porosity in a liquid can be achieved by the dissolution of porous organic cages at high concentrations in solvents whose molecular constituents are too large to occupy their pores. Typically, these systems are reported and studied as isotropic, unordered liquids, but in an attempt to understand the structure of these cage-based porous liquids by combining neutron diffraction experiments with molecular dynamics simulations, we have found evidence of cage aggregation and the subsequent formation of a branched 3-dimensional network consistent with a mass fractal. Subsequent studies of the birefringence in these liquids using polarising optical microscopy to investigate the formation of ordered phases, has led us to now further understand that their formation is highly sensitive with birefringence indicative of longer range ordering typically observed after 4-14 days. Therefore, to finalise a drafted manuscript for publication, we propose to repeat the neutron scattering experiment on a freshly prepared sample of the previously studied porous liquid to definitively confirm the presence of the mass fractal in the studied porous liquid.