Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering Seminar
and
P&G Polymer Community of Practice Lecture
Thursday, November 20, 2008, 2:00 pm
544 Baldwin
University of Cincinnati
Tailoring the Structure and Properties of Polymer Nanocomposites
Peter F. Green
Vincent T. and Gloria M. Gorguze Professor of Engineering
Chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department
2006 President Materials Research Society
University of Michigan
Incorporating “nanofillers” into polymer hosts to create polymer nanocomposites (PNCS)
with specific properties has enabled the use of polymers for applications in diverse areas
that include sensors, functional coatings, devices and structural applications. The
properties PNCs are typically very different from those of the polymer host, even at low
nanofiller concentrations; they depend on the functionalities of the polymer and the
nanofiller. In addition they depend on collective polymer/nanoparticle interactions and
processes associated with the morphological structure of the system. To this end, a
primary challenge is associated with understanding the connection between the
thermodynamic phase behavior of these materials and their properties. Through
investigations of a specific class of polymer/nanoparticles systems, where the
nanoparticles are grafted with polymer chains, we show how the spatial distribution of
the nanocrystals in a thin film can tailored through judicious control of the entropic and
enthalpic interactions. We also show how the glass transition and the chain dynamics
(including the viscosity) may be tailored though control of the morphology. If time
permits, we show how the optical properties of a third class nanocomposite can be
controlled significantly, through tailoring of the morphology.
Peter Green is Vincent T. and Gloria M. Gorguze Professor of Engineering and Chair of the
Materials Science and Engineering department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also
holds appointments in Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering and in
Applied Physics. Dr. Green was the 2006 President of the Materials Research Society. He
received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University in 1985 and
subsequently spent 11 years at Sandia National laboratories, the last 5 of which he was Manager
of Glass and Electronic Ceramics Research Department. In 1996 he joined the Chemical
Engineering faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the BFGoodrich Professor
of Materials Engineering, until August of 2005.
Professor Green's current research is in the field of polymers and nanocomposites. His research
is motivated by the fact that technologies, such as devices, sensors and coatings, rely on the
properties and performance of polymeric materials with physical dimensions in the nano-scale
regime, comparable to the size of these large macromolecules. His research is directed at
understanding such phenomena with the goal of developing rules to fabricate and process
polymeric materials with properties "tailored" for specific applications in the nano-scale regime.
He is the author of the book, "Kinetics, transport and Structure in Hard and Soft materials”. He is
a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Ceramics Society. He has served
on the editorial advisory boards of scientific journals, including Macromolecules and Physical
Review Letter. He has also served on a number of advisory committees and boards for the
National Science Foundation and the National Academies.
Host: Dale W. Schaefer, 513 556 5431, dale.schaefer@uc.edu
1