Soft, smart multiresponsive materials: Complex matter where simplicity matters

Speaker: Debashish Mukherji, Max-Planck Institut für Polymerforschung
Date & Time: Wednesday, October 25th, 2:30 PM
Location: AMPEL 311
Local Contact: Joerg Rottler
Intended Audience:

Design of multiresponsive smart, soft materials is at the onset of many developments in polymer physics, chemical physics, biophysics and biochemistry research. A system is known as smart responsive when a slight change in external stimuli can drastically alter its structure, function and stability. Because the relevant energy scale in these systems is of the order of thermal energy (kT), its properties are dictated by large conformational and compositional fluctuations. Therefore, addressing these problems within both experimental and theoretical setups become usually difficult. This talk will focus on some latest developments in the field of smart polymers, combining the efforts from experiments, theory and computer simulations.

Future directions will also be discussed that are not only restricted to conventional polymer physics, rather going beyond to the design of functional responsive systems and also to conjugated polymers.

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