An Exceptionally Stable and Scalable Sugar-Polyolefin Frank-Kasper A15 Phase.

Abstract

"One-component" soft material Frank-Kasper (FK) phases are an intriguing structural form of matter that possess periodically ordered structures arising from the self-reconfiguration and close packing of an initial assembly of identical "deformable" spheres into two or more size- or shape-distinct sets of particles. Significant challenges that must still be addressed to advance the field of soft matter FK phases further, however, include their rare and unpredictable occurrence, uncertain mechanisms of solid-state assembly, and low thermodynamic stability. Here we show that a readily-accessible sugar-polyolefin conjugate quantitatively produces an exceptionally stable solid-state FK A15 phase through a rapid and irreversible thermotropic order-order transition, which contrary to other prevailing proposed mechanisms, does not require mass transfer between particles or large structural reorganization in the bulk to establish unit cell non-equivalency. Our results provide the basis for a realistic strategy for obtaining practical and scalable quantities of a diverse range of sugar-polyolefin FK A15 phases with unique intrinsic physical properties and chemical reactivities not previously seen in such systems.