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Making Novel Porous Bacterial Cellulose Hydrogels for Sustainable Applications
Pressing challenges in climate change require the development of the next generation of renewable materials addressing cooling, CO2 capture and energy production. Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a very promising material to be used in a sustainable future as it is purer than plant-extracted cellulose and most importantly, it is produced in a sustainable and scalable way [1]. To exploit the use of BC as a functional material, such as heat insulators or filters, we need to develop robust methods to control their macrostructure.
In this project, you will explore the combination of phase separation techniques [2,3] in bacterial cellulose hydrogels to tune the morphology of the phase. And study the optical and mechanical properties of the resulting novel materials.
[1] Z. Wu, et al. ‘Insights into hierarchical structure–property–application relationships of advanced bacterial cellulose materials’, Advanced Functional Materials 33, 2214327 (2023).
[2] Fernandez-Rico et al, ‘Putting the Squeeze on Phase separation’, JACS Au (2021).
[3] Fernandez-Rico et al, ‘Elastic microphase separation produced robust bicontinuous materials’, Nature Materials (2023).
Throughout this project you will learn how to grow cellulose from bacteria, and use phase separation processes to make a range of droplet-like or interconnected structures inside bacterial cellulose. You will learn how to use optical microscopy to characterise the microscopic structure and colour of these materials. Besides that, you will learn how to characterise their mechanical properties by stretching the sample using a tensile test. Finally, you will learn how to analyse the acquired data using Matlab. If everything goes well, this project will feed on a publication.
Throughout this project you will learn how to grow cellulose from bacteria, and use phase separation processes to make a range of droplet-like or interconnected structures inside bacterial cellulose. You will learn how to use optical microscopy to characterise the microscopic structure and colour of these materials. Besides that, you will learn how to characterise their mechanical properties by stretching the sample using a tensile test. Finally, you will learn how to analyse the acquired data using Matlab. If everything goes well, this project will feed on a publication.
The goal of this project is to combine phase separation techniques in bacterial cellulose hydrogels to prepare novel architected materials for filtration and cooling applications.
The goal of this project is to combine phase separation techniques in bacterial cellulose hydrogels to prepare novel architected materials for filtration and cooling applications.