ChEMS Seminar: Controlling the Viscoelasticity of Soft Matter with Colloidal Building Blocks

Abstract: One of the central challenges in soft matter and materials science is the microscopic engineering of functional materials. Incorporating anisotropy is of general interest here, for example in actin networks, clay platelets and polymer composites where geometry, ordering and kinetics all play important roles in determining material properties. Our group seeks to apply a fundamental understanding of colloidal particles and their microscopic interactions to design soft matter with unusual macroscopic properties. In this talk, I will discuss how the flow and mechanical properties of soft matter are related to their microscale dynamics and structure. For instance, how does roughness govern flow transitions, and can gels better withstand an applied deformation when different particle geometries are used? We answer these questions using polymeric colloids and nanoemulsions with well characterized interactions. This earlier work leads to our ongoing projects on the tribology (friction coefficient) of soft substrates and the production of functional hydrogel fibers for drug delivery applications.

Bio: Hsiao earned her bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2007) and her doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan (2014). She received the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship for her doctoral dissertation on understanding colloidal gels and suspensions in flowing systems. She studied nanoemulsion-filled thermoresponsive hydrogels during her postdoctoral research at MIT.

Hosts: Regina Ragan and Ali Mohraz