Mechanism and performance relevance of nanomorphogenesis in polyamide films revealed by quantitative 3D imaging and machine learning.

ABSTRACT: Biological morphogenesis has inspired many efficient strategies to diversify material structure and functionality using a fixed set of components. However, implementation of morphogenesis concepts to design soft nanomaterials is underexplored. Here, we study nanomorphogenesis in the form of the three-dimensional (3D) crumpling of polyamide membranes used for commercial molecular separation, through an unprecedented integration of electron tomography, reaction-diffusion theory, machine learning (ML), and liquid-phase atomic force microscopy. 3D tomograms show that the spatial arrangement of crumples scales with monomer concentrations in a form quantitatively consistent with a Turing instability. Membrane microenvironments quantified from the nanomorphologies of crumples are combined with th

SUBMITTER: An H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8865778 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature