3D printed mesoporous superconductors with periodic order on three length scales and enhanced properties via block copolymer directed self-assembly

Kavli Affiliate: Ulrich B. Wiesner

| First 5 Authors: Fei Yu, R. Paxton Thedford, Thomas A. Tartaglia, Sejal S. Sheth, Guillaume Freychet

| Summary:

Solution-based soft matter self-assembly (SA) promises unique materials
properties from approaches including additive manufacturing/three-dimensional
(3D) printing. We report direct ink writing derived, hierarchically porous
transition metal nitride superconductors (SCs) and precursor oxides,
structure-directed by Pluronics-family block copolymer (BCP) SA and heat
treated in various environments. SCs with periodic lattices on three length
scales show record nanoconfinement-induced upper critical field enhancements
correlated with BCP molar mass, attaining values of 50 T for NbN and 8.1 T for
non-optimized TiN samples, the first mapping of a tailorable SC property onto a
macromolecular parameter. They reach surface areas above 120 m$^2$/g, the
highest reported for compound SCs to date. Embedded printing enables the first
BCP directed mesoporous non-self-supporting helical SCs. Results suggest that
additive manufacturing may open pathways to mesoporous SCs with not only a
variety of macroscopic form factors but enhanced properties from intrinsic,
SA-derived mesostructures with substantial academic and technological promise.

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