Start
Mar 17, 2015 - 17:00
End
Mar 17, 2015 - 18:00
Venue
Room 240 Computer Lab Chemical Engineering
Event Type
Speaker
Prof. Sanat K. Kumar Department of Chemical Engineering Columbia University New York NY
Title
Nanocomposites with Grafted Nanoparticles
Abstract: A central area of research in the soft matter community is in organic/organic hybrid materials with nanoscale inorganic particles. These materials have been focused on due to their promise of having synergistic thermal mechanical and optical properties relative to the pure materials.It is now accepted that the spatial distribution of the inorganic nanoparticles critically affect the properties of the resulting materials but a grand challenge is to control the spatial distribution of the inorganic hydrophilic nanoparticles in the organic hydrophobic polymer matrix. I focus on one particular approach to controlling nanoparticle spatial dispersion the use of polymer-grafted nanoparticles. In the case where the NP and the grafted polymer chains energetically “dislike” each other we have an architecture akin to a microphase separated block copolymer or a surfactant. Analogous to these “surfactants” these grafted nanoparticles also assemble into a range of morphologies thus giving us the unprecedented ability to control the particle dispersion state. We first focus on the factors controlling this assembly and use this knowledge to consider the utility of these materials in creating membranes which have the potential to revolutionalize the separation of hydrocarbons and in carbon sequestration and also in the creation of biomimetic materials.Bio: Prof. Sanat K Kumar is currently the Dept. Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Dept. Columbia University New York. His research interests are in the areas of Synthetic-and bio-polymers nano composites and nanomaterials.