Nature provides us of many examples of self-assembled materials, from soft and flexible cell-membranes to hard sea shells. Such materials are the outcome of spontaneously formed complex structures due to molecular interaction between large collections of

1
(No Transcript)
2
(No Transcript)
3
(No Transcript)
4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
Nature provides us of many examples of
self-assembled materials, from soft and flexible
cell-membranes to hard sea shells. Such materials
are the outcome of spontaneously formed complex
structures due to molecular interaction between
large collections of particles. In ChE, self
assembled materials can provide an efficient
method to organize molecules and molecular
clusters into precise predetermined structures
Simple, efficient methods to organize molecules
and molecular clusters into precise,
pre-determined structures are another important
area of nanotechnology exploration. Nature
provides many examples of intricately organized
architectures such as sea shells -- whose
self-assembly is choreographed by molecular
interactions. Researchers are applying similar
strategies to spontaneously organize new
nanocomposite and mesoporous materials. In fact,
these nanomaterials are already helping to attain
scientists vision for new technologies.
8
(No Transcript)
9
Nature provides us of many examples of
self-assembled materials, from cell-membranes to

Colloidal and Molecular Self-Assembly Colloidal
and molecular self-assembly may be used to build
materials with spatially ordered patterns on the
nanometer and sub-nanometer length scales. As a
result of these short length scales involved,
these materials may exhibit transport,
electronic, optical, and mechanical properties
different from homogeneous bulk material and are
referred to as nanostructured materials.
Professor Hillhouses research is focused towards
understanding these self-assembly processes to
engineer new nanostructured materials for
solid-state electronic devices, fuel cells, and
facilitated transport membranes.  Nanostructured
Materials A couple of examples of nanostructured
materials are microporous and mesoporous
molecular sieves. Unlike most other porous
materials, which have broad pore size
distributions and poorly defined pores,
microporous and mesoporous molecular sieves are
inorganic frameworks with pores of well-defined
size, geometry, and connectivity. The pore
diameters are tunable and are of molecular
dimensions allowing the materials to exclude
molecules based on size. As a result, powders of
both microporous and mesoporous molecular sieves
have found applications in catalysis and
selective adsorption. However, if thin films of
these materials could be synthesized with pores
oriented perpendicular to a substrate, they may
be used as templates for the deposition of
nanometer scale electronic, magnetic, and
thermoelectric materials. In this area our
research is focused on the synthesis of new
frameworks, controlling pore orientation,
colloidal self-assembly, defect formation, growth
of continuous thin films, and the synthesis of
nanowires. 
Self-assembled materials exploit our
understanding of molecular interactions and
materials chemistry to enable the spontaneous
formation of complex structures.
Simple, efficient methods to organize molecules
and molecular clusters into precise,
pre-determined structures are another important
area of nanotechnology exploration. Nature
provides many examples of intricately organized
architectures such as sea shells -- whose
self-assembly is choreographed by molecular
interactions. Researchers are applying similar
strategies to spontaneously organize new
nanocomposite and mesoporous materials. In fact,
these nanomaterials are already helping to attain
scientists vision for new technologies.
10
The chemical engineering science of materials is
entering a new era of so-called "designer
materials," wherein, based upon the properties
required for a particular application, a material
is designed by exploiting the self-assembly of
appropriately-chosen molecular constituents.
Materials so fabricated (also sometimes referred
to as advanced materials, are presently proposed
for numerous applications, ranging from photonic
and quantum devices to biomedical and tissue
engineering applications. My research focus is to
develop a theoretical and computonally-based
program aimed at elucidating the fundamental
mechanisms underlying the design of novel,
self-assembled advanced materials. The goal is to
complement the research of experimentalists
(synthetic chemists, chemical engineers, and
material scientists) by providing simple but
quantitative guidelines to rationally design and
synthesize these materials. Some of the current
areas of interest include Self-assembly of
multicomponent functional block copolymers (FBP)
like those containing semiconducting, optically
active and liquid crystalline units has emerged
as a promising route to advanced materials.
Experiments reported in literature on these
polymers have indicated that these FBPs exhibit
novel hierarchical self-assembly morphologies
dictated by an interplay between the steric and
energetic interactions. To date however there
does not exist any systematic way of predicting
the morphologies (and thereby controlling the
properties) of the above classes of polymers. The
goal of the this project is to develop
computational tools towards such an objective. In
addition, the same tools can be extended to other
systems involving similar features, like for
instance, self-assembly in polymer-particle
nanocomposites and synthetic blockcopolypeptides.
An understanding of the dynamical features of
self-assembled materials is a crucial
prerequisite to any application involving
processing of these materials. Theoretical
descriptions of dynamics in these materials are
inherently complicated due to the fact that (i)
These materials are complex fluids i.e. possess
viscoelasticity (in contrast to simple Newtonian
fluids whose descriptions are well developed)
(ii) These materials are self-assembled, i.e.
possess an inherent microstructure (in order).
The latter feature contrasts with even
conventionally studied complex fluids (like
homogeneous polymer solutions). This poject
proposes to develop computational descriptions
for the dynamics of self-assembled phases of
multiblock copolymers. The goal of this project
is two-fold (i) To explore the utility of
mesoscale simulation tools, like dissipative
particle dynamics (DPD) for predicting the
dynamical response of self-assembled materials.
(ii) To develop simple analytical descriptions of
the dynamics of these materials to possibly
enable a hybrid molecularcontinuum scale
simulations. The discovery of surfactant and
liquid crystal templating techniques has enabled
the controlled synthesis of mesoporous inorganic
materials (possessing pore sizes in the range 20
A and 500 A). However, despite the potential for
applications and the breakthroughs in the
synthesis pathways, quantitative models
possessing predictive capabilities for describing
the formation and structure of these materials
are still lacking. This project focuses on
developing models and simulations aimed at
predicting the structure and characteristics of
inorganic mesoporous materials, based upon a
description of the cooperative self-assembly of
the surfactant and inorganic species.