Amorphous network materials are becoming increasingly important with applications, for example, as supercapacitors, battery anodes, and proton conduction membranes. The design of these materials is hampered by the amorphous nature of the structure and sensitivity to synthetic conditions. Here, we show that through artificial synthesis, fully mimicking the catalytic formation cycle, and full synthetic conditions, we can generate structural models that can fully describe the physical properties of these amorphous network materials. This opens up pathways for the rational design where complex structural influences, such as the solvent and catalyst choice, can be taken into account.
This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Journal of Physical Chemistry B (Soft Condensed Matter and Biophysical Chemistry), copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher.
To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.0c04850