Polymer-grafted nanoparticles

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Composites of polymer and nanoparticles have many property improvements compared to pure polymer.  These include improvements in mechanical strength, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, optical properties, and photoelectric properties.  However, the mixing of polymer with nanoparticles often poses a problem.  To over come this issue and others, there have been recent efforts toward the synthesis of polymer-grafted nanoparticles.  These new types of species show interesting phase behavior - often forming new types of self-assembled phases with new interesting properties (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/sm/c7sm00230k#!divAbstract, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.7b01754).  This project will be geared toward understanding the phase behavior of polymer-grafted nanoparticles, and their applications.

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