Dr Joe Manning completed his PhD in the department in 2018. Since then he decided to stay in academia but switch tack and he's now doing a postdoc studying molecular simulations on nanomaterials at the University of Bath. He wanted to experience how university research is in a different group and also a different field. Dr Manning has co authored the paper Mimicking Biosintering: The Identification of Highly Condensed Surfaces in Bioinspired Silica Materials with Brant Walkley, John L. Provis, Siddharth V. Patwardhan.
Abstract
Interfacial interactions between inorganic surfaces and organic additives are vital to develop new complex nanomaterials. Learning from biosilica materials, composite nanostructures have been developed, which exploit the strength and directionality of specific polyamine additive-silica surface interactions. Previous interpretations of these interactions are almost universally based on interfacial charge matching and/or hydrogen bonding.
In this study, the team analyzed the surface chemistry of bioinspired silica (BIS) materials using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy as a function of the organic additive concentration. We found significant additional association between the additives and fully condensed (Q4) silicon species compared to industrial silica materials, leading to more overall Q4 concentration and higher hydrothermal stability, despite BIS having a shorter synthesis time.
They posit that the polyfunctionality and catalytic activity of additives in the BIS synthesis lead to both of these surface phenomena, contrasting previous studies on monofunctional surfactants used in most other artificial templated silica syntheses. From this, we propose that additive polyfunctionality can be used to generate tailored artificial surfaces in situ and provide insights into the process of biosintering in biosilica systems, highlighting the need for more in-depth simulations on interfacial interactions at silica surfaces.