Revisiting urea-based gelators: strong solvent- and casting-microstructure dependencies and organogel processing using an alumina template

Abstract

Urea-based gelators have been thoroughly characterized through various techniques and exhibit a strong solvent-structuration dependency in both the gel and the xerogel states. In a ground-breaking manner, gels were introduced in alumina membranes, which act as templates, in order to shape these materials and force the alignment of the corresponding self-assembled nanofibers by confinement.