Image: Researchers devised a way to rationalize and control elastic polymers for use in these soft-robotic arms, inflatable structures that rely on small amounts of injected air to reach for and grasp objects with sensitivity and precision. Courtesy Pierre-Thomas Brun.
Complex materials, produced by highly refined control of structures at multiple length-scales, comprise the very fabric of many modern technologies. Soft materials, mostly synthetic polymers, are lightweight and strong — these are found as structural materials in cars, homes or sports equipment, in packaging for food and beverages, but also used as membranes for desalination and other separations.
Most polymeric materials introduced into commerce today contain multiple components or phases, with supramolecular structures ranging from nanometers to microns. Organic materials and polymers are also increasingly useful as building blocks for electronic and photovoltaic applications, an area of major activity in this department. Colloidal assemblies are also an important class of materials that have been the focus of significant research efforts at Princeton.
Processing and fluid dynamics play an important role in the development of polymeric materials and complex fluids. For example, researchers at Princeton utilize fast mixing of polymer solutions with a poor solvent for the polymers to produce nanoparticles with controlled structure, size, and complex morphologies in a one-step scalable process. Fluid-mechanical instabilities are being used to generate intricate patterns in two and three dimensions.
Research News
Faculty
Dynamics of Fluids and Flexible Solids; Interfacial Phenomena; Pattern Forming Instabilities; Dynamics of Living Systems
Polymer Science and Engineering; Nanostructured and Liquid Crystalline Polymers; Engineering and Design of Hierarchical Materials; Additive Manufacturing
Theory and Simulation of Electrochemical Processes; Electrochemical Reaction and Transport Mechanisms; Dynamic Electrochemical Interfaces; Disordered Electrochemical Systems
Ionized Gas Plasma-Aided Nanofabrication; Plasma Catalysis; Molecular Simulations of Plasma-Surface Interactions
Organic and Polymer Transistors and Solar Cells; Organic Semiconductors and Conducting Polymers; Self-Assembled Monolayers; Soft Lithography
Materials Synthesis; Solid-state Characterization; Advanced Spectroscopy; Catalysis
Molecular simulation of fluids, materials and biological systems; Thermodynamic analysis of processes; Ionic liquids and their applications
Polymer Science and Engineering, Nanoscale Materials Characterization, Supramolecular Polymers, Healing and Responsive Materials, Polymeric Membranes
Polymer Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering; Nanoscience and Nanotechnology; Rheology
Associated Faculty
Bioengineering: biomaterials, biomechanics, swarm behavior
Artificial Intelligence; Statistical Machine Learning; Chemical Physical; Physical Chemistry; Biology; Materials Science; Simulations; Deep Learning; Generative Models
Theory and simulation of molecular self-assembly; multicomponent fluids; biomolecules; design of soft materials
Structural Topology Optimization; Reliability Based Design and Topology Optimization; Topological Data Structures
Fluid Dynamics and Transport Processes; Complex Fluids; Colloidal Hydrodynamics; Microfluidics; Cellular-scale Hydrodynamics; Biofilms
Durability of Alkali-Activated Cements; Atomic and Nanoscale Morphology of Cementitious Materials; Reaction Kinetics of Cement Formation
