Ricerc@Sapienza

Tailoring the morphology of macroporous structures remains one of the biggest challengesin material synthesis. Here, we present an innovative approach to fabricatecustommacroporous materials with pore size varying throughout the structure by up to an order of magnitudeusingon-demand reconfigurable microfluidics. We employavalve-based flow-focusing junction(vFF)in which the size of the orifice can be adjusted in real-time (within tens of milliseconds)to generate foams withon-linecontrolled bubble size.

The use of inhibition chemicals holds the prospect of an efficient strategy to control crystallization in porous materials, thereby potentially contributing to the prevention or mitigation of the salt decay phenomenon in modern as well as historical building materials in a more sustainable manner.