Achievement

The Material Science faculty and trainee team is working to understand and harness the interactions and physico-chemical characteristics of polymer-grafted nanoparticle materials. The team’s interest is in polymer grafted particles both as a model system to understand the governing parameters that control the interactions and assembly of nanoparticles but also as functional building blocks of nanocomposite materials for application in active self-regulating membrane materials. The group has made progress in both establishing the relationship between polymer graft modification and cohesive energy in nanoparticle-based composite materials as well as in understanding the effect of polymer grafts on the thermal transport characteristics of particle-filled media. The expectation is that these results will provide new opportunities to improve models of interactions between nanoparticles and their environment and showcase novel areas for application of nanoparticle-based materials.