Figure 5
Scanning electron microscopy images of a typical bicontinuous microemulsion-derived, nanoporous polyethylene (PE) monolith used as a nanocasting template throughout this work. This particular monolith was created by annealing a PE/poly(ethylene-alt-propylene) (PEP)/poly(ethylene-b-ethylene-alt-propylene) blend with φH=0.85 at 127 °C for 2 h, quenching in liquid nitrogen and removing PEP homopolymer by solvation in tetrahydrofuran. The images were taken after fracturing the monolith while submerged in liquid nitrogen. The right two images are a higher-magnification view of the central portion of the region shown in the corresponding image to the left. The scale bars, from left to right, correspond to 3 μm, 750 nm and 300 nm, respectively.
