(620a) Complex Chiral Hydrogel from Nanoparticles

Gels represent a versatile system with a variety of useful properties. The emergence of chiral nanoparticles (NPs) opens the possibility of making chiral gels from them that may reveal new properties related to the mirror asymmetry of stress transfer in such particle systems. Here, we show that chiral hydrogel can be made from chiral cobalt oxide NPs by coordination crosslinking with cadmium cations. The brown and viscous hydrogel reveals increased circular dichroism (CD) spectra compared to the NPs. The high density of interconnectivity and porosity of this gel system was observed from both scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The viscoelastic study using dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) instrument revealed that these chiral hydrogels have two critical frequencies. The first critical frequency of the loss modulus and tan delta suggests the possible coupling between that can be used to open the door of Cosserat elasticity.