Drying kinetics of deformable and cracking nano-porous gels

Convective drying of a porous medium with a paste cover

The convective drying of a composite system made of a porous medium covered with a paste is a situation often encountered with soils, roads, building and cultural heritage materials. Here we discuss the basic mechanisms at work during the drying of a model composite system made of a homogeneous paste covering a simple granular packing. We start by reviewing the rather well-known case of the convective drying of a simple granular packing (i.e. without paste cover), which serves as a reference for physical interpretations. We show that a simple model assuming homogeneous desaturation followed by a progressive development of a dry front from the sample free surface is in agreement with observations of the internal liquid distribution variations in time. In particular, this model is able to reproduce the saturation vs. time curves of various simple granular systems, which supports our understanding of physical mechanisms at work. Then we show the detailed characteristics of drying of initially saturated model composite systems (with kaolin or cellulose paste) with the help of MRI measurements providing the liquid distribution in the sample at different times during the process up to the very last stages of drying. It appears that the granular medium is unaffected (i.e. remains saturated) during an initial period during which the paste shrinks and finally forms a sufficiently rigid porous structure which will not any more shrink later on. Then the drying process is governed by capillary effects down to very low saturation. Over a wide range of saturations both media desaturate homogeneously (within each medium) at different rates which depend on the specific porous structure of the media, so as to maintain capillary equilibrium throughout the sample. During these different stages the drying rate of the whole system remains constant. For sufficiently low saturation in the paste a dry front can develop, both in the paste and the porous medium below, and the drying rate now decreases. These results show that in a drying composite system liquid extraction can occur more or less simultaneously in the different parts of the material up to the very last stages of drying. The corresponding evolution of the distributions of liquid in the different parts of the sample also provides key information for the prediction of ion or particle transport and accumulation in the different parts of a composite system.

Structure Inheritance in Nanoparticle Ink Direct-Writing Processes and Crack-Free Nano-Copper Interconnects Printed by a Single-Run Approach

When nanoparticle conductive ink is used for printing interconnects, cracks and pores are common defects that deteriorate the electrical conductivity of the printed circuits. Influences of the ink solvent, the solid fraction of the ink, the pre-printing treatment and the sintering parameters on the interconnect morphology and conductivity were investigated. It was found that the impacts of all these factors coupled with each other throughout the whole procedure, from the pre-printing to the post-printing processes, and led to a structure inheritance effect. An optimum process route was developed for producing crack-free interconnects by a single-run direct-writing approach using home-made nano-copper ink. A weak gel was promoted in the ink before printing in the presence of long-chain polymers and bridging molecules by mechanical agitation. The fully developed gel network prevented the phase separation during ink extrusion and crack formations during drying. With the reducing agents in the ink and slow evaporation of the ink solvent, compact packing and neck joining of copper nanoparticles were obtained after a two-step sintering process. The crack-free interconnects successfully produced have a surface roughness smaller than 1.5 μm and the square resistances as low as 0.01 Ω/□.

Robust Chiral Organization of Cellulose Nanocrystals in Capillary Confinement

We showed large area uniformly aligned chiral photonic bioderived films from a liquid crystal phase formed by a cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) suspension placed in a thin capillary. As a result of the spatial confinement of the drying process, the interface between coexisting isotropic and chiral phases aligns perpendicular to the long axis of the capillary. This orientation facilitates a fast homogeneous growth of chiral pseudolayers parallel to the interface. Overall, the formation of organized solids takes hours vs weeks in contrast to the slow and heterogeneous process of drying from the traditional dish-cast approach. The saturation of water vapor in one end of the capillary causes anisotropic drying and promotes unidirectional propagation of the anisotropic phase in large regions that results in chiral CNC solid films with a uniformly oriented layered morphology. Corresponding ordering processes were monitored in situ at a nanoscale, mesoscale, and microscopic scale with complementary scattering and microscopic techniques. The resulting films show high orientation order at a multilength scale over large regions and preserved chiral handedness causing a narrower optical reflectance band and uniform birefringence over macroscopic regions in contrast to traditional dish-cast CNC films and those assembled in a magnetic field and on porous substrates. These thin films with a controllable and well-identified uniform morphology, structural colors, and handedness open up interesting possibilities for broad applications in bioderived photonic nanomaterials.

Strengthening and drying rate of a drying emulsion layer

From direct observations and MRI measurements we demonstrate that during the drying of a direct (oil in water) emulsion the whole system essentially concentrates homogeneously, which leads to shrinkage, without air penetration. The structure and mechanical strength (i.e. the elastic modulus) of this concentrated bulk are not significantly different from those of an emulsion directly prepared at this higher concentration. Despite this phenomenon, the drying rate continuously and rapidly decreases as the water content decreases, in contrast with the drying of a simple granular packing. This results from a concentration gradient which develops towards the free surface of the sample where the oil droplets finally coalesce, ultimately forming an oil layer covering the sample through which the water molecules have to diffuse before evaporating. Moreover, as during the process, the liquid is transported towards the free surface where it evaporates, surfactants accumulate and tend to form a thin solid layer below the oil layer, which tends to further reduce the drying rate.