“Probing the Assembly and Properties of Soft Materials with Advanced Sampling”
Soft Materials, encompassing (but not limited to) polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals are fascinating systems where molecular interactions often conspire to create new phases and emergent properties. Free energies provide essential information about the properties and structure of these materials, but calculations can be onerous, as the systems can be complex, and useful analytical expressions may not be present. Computations may elucidate these features but can be challenging, particularly if the associated landscape exhibits large, rapidly varying features and many competing metastable minima. In this seminar, I will discuss my group’s work in developing and extending a set of molecular simulation techniques that are useful for extracting phase behavior and material properties. In particular, I will discuss our applications of these advanced sampling techniques to probe fundamental elastic properties of model liquid crystal systems, to elucidate the charging and complexation behavior of weak polyelectrolytes, and to examine more general physico-chemical equilibria in colloidal and macromolecular systems.
Flyer PDF: Jonathan Whitmer Flyer(5-23-19)
Date/Time:
Date(s) - May 23, 2019
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Location:
Boelter Hall 5436
580 Portola Plaza Los Angeles California 90095
Map Unavailable