Co-sponsored by The Nanostructures Lab, The Tiny Tech Club and Techlink. 

Liquids on Nanolandscapes

Dr. Oleg Gang 

Introduction by  Prof. Peter Pershan

Harvard -Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science

Faculty Member of  The X-Ray Group

Background Papers for Talk:

TBA

To incorporate soft matter and its functionality into nanotechnologies, it will be necessary to understand the interplay between liquids, soft matter assembly and interfaces at the nanoscale.  Although macroscopic properties can be traced back to the microscopic molecular interactions, at small sizes the structural, rheological and self-organizing properties of soft materials are strongly influenced by the contributions that interfacial energies make to the total energy balance. 

Compared to solid state systems, nanoscale structural aspects of liquids and soft matter are not well explored. Part of the reason is that up to now, the available experimental techniques have either been incompatible with liquid/vapor environments, or have required structural order on long length scales.

We will discuss our approach to investigation of nanoscale confinement and assembly in soft matter and liquids through the use of patterned templates. Particularly, the shape, size and the local interfacial energy of surface structures can modify the wetting behavior as well as local effects that influence the formation of soft, controllable structures in thin film, i.e. nano- drops, channels, nano-composite organizations. We will report our progress on how templates with well defined nanoscale topological structures modify the structure, behavior and wetting properties of liquids at interfaces. We will also discuss different type of surface structures that are formed from planar arrays of nano-objects which play an "active" role in the interaction between the liquid and a solid substrate. Our recent results on behavior of nanoparticles in nearly molecularly thin liquid films will be presented.

Bio - Forthcoming

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