Research Projects

The primary goal of this project is to develop a designing guide for sustainable colloidal foams with minimal material loading with excellent mechanical and thermal stability. We pursue the possibility of manipulating the freezing induced self-assembly of shape anisotropic colloids (e.g. rod like particle) in the cellular wall of the foam structure and manipulating the inter-particle interaction. The higher anisotropy particles are known to lowers the percolation threshold; therefore, even low inclusion concentrations of the shape anisotropic colloids can significantly alter the mechanical properties of the materials as compared to that realised for spherical colloids. We severely lack an in-depth understanding of the above fundamental physics of freezing induced self-assembly of anisotropic colloids, further, how the growing ice front interact with the shape anisotropic colloids at varying rate of freezing and the direction of freezing. Second, we also lack clear understanding on how the micro-structural changes related to the performance of the cellular solid foams. Hence, with the broad objective to utilize the shape anisotropic colloids with controlled aspect ratio and their assembly in a polymer mesh as the support to design sustainable colloidal foams via ice-templating, the three research aims of this proposal are: (i) Develop a thorough mapping on how the particle aspect ratio, particle/polymer concentration, freezing rate and freezing direction can be manipulated to synthesize self-standing colloidal foams; (ii) Understand how the mechanical and thermal performance of the foams are correlated to the cellular micro-structure and assembly of colloidal rods in the cell walls; (iii) Identify how the preceding behaviours are influenced by the inter-particle and particle-polymer interaction, and the particle–ice hydrodynamic interactions during the process of freezing. The key outcome for this study is the development of detailed formulation guide for designing sustainable macro-porous colloidal scaffold with minimal material loading, with excellent mechanical and fire-retardant properties, as the possible alternative to the conventional polymeric foams.