Start
Mar 26, 2009 - 16:00
End
Mar 26, 2009 - 17:30
Venue
Creativity Hall Room No 118
Event Type
Speaker
Prof. Alon McCormick Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science University of Minnesota Minneapolis USA
Title
Observing and understanding nanostructure formation
Abstract: My research with students and collaborators has focused on the observation and when possible quantitative modeling of molecular assembly. I will describe chemical engineering approaches to two such industrial processes. First with H. Ted Davis several students and postdoctoral associates have developed new insights into surfactant self-assembly mechanisms and their potential role in advanced material fabrication. Such processes are being imaged with cryo-Transmission Electron Microscopy and modeled using coarse-grained molecular simulation. Second with L. E. (Skip) Scriven and Lorraine Francis students have observed and modeled the formation of strong highly crosslinked polymer networks during the UV- and electron beam-curing of acrylate coatings.BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Professor Alon V. McCormick has taught and advised research students in the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Department at the University of Minnesota since 1989. He is the program leader of the Nanostructural Materials and Processes research program and is also active in the Coating Process Fundamentals program of the Industrial Partnership for Interfacial and Materials Engineering (IPrime) and he has recently served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in Chemical Engineering. He has taught at Minnesota for 18 years. With colleagues and research students he has published over 150 papers in the field of reaction engineering of nanostructured materials. The current directions of research are in hybrid inorganic/organic polymerization (sometimes called "sol/gel" processes) radiation-induced crosslinking polymerization to glassy coatings and molecular self-assembly processes using surfactant systems. He has collaborated with and consulted for a number of companies engineering advanced material design and production. After his undergraduate studies at Tulane University he worked with Alex Bell and Clayton Radke for his Ph. D. from the University of California Berkeley; he then did postdoctoral work with Professor Alex Pines in the Chemistry Department at Berkeley.