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Complex Fluids and Polymers

APPLICATIONS

Energy applications: Liquid fuel cells, conducting lubricants, electrolytes for lithium metal batteries, nanoparticle fluids for carbon capture, nanomaterials for biomass conversion

Transport processes in living systems: Treatment of brain tumors, artificial trees, bioseparations

THE ROLE OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERS

Understanding the structure, rheology, interfacial and transport behaviors of complex fluids and polymers is among the foremost challenges of chemical engineering science. Faculty at Cornell are addressing this challenge through analytical theory, numerical simulation and experiments that span length scales from nanometers to meters. 

Lynden Archer's group is studying nanoscale organic hybrid materials (NOHMs).
Lynden Archer and graduate students Laura Olenick and Praveen Agarwal  perform zeta potential measurements on nanoscale organic hybrid materials (NOHMs).  (CU Photo)

Inspired by the success of integrated electronics, scientists and engineers have initiated an effort to miniaturize chemical processes. This scaling down exaggerates the importance of interfacial forces and inspires studies of a rich set of transport processes including:

• Surface-induced chaotic flows for enhancing transport and mixing in microscale fuel cells.
• Field-assisted separation of charged molecules and particles in micro- and nanofluidic arrays.
• Stability, interactions, and dynamics of arrays of liquid droplets and their use in field-responsive adhesives and actuators in MEMS.
• Morphological and shape evolution of polymeric and inorganic nanofibrils in strongly stretching flows produced by electrospinning.
• Surface migration of polymeric and nanoparticle additives in polymer hosts.

Fernando Escobedo's group works on modeling and simulation of polymers and biomolecules.
Fernando Escobedo’s lab works on modeling and simulation of polymers and biomolecules.

Advances in synthetic chemistry during the last two decades allow the architecture of polymers, particles and hybrid systems to be manipulated almost at will. This provides great freedom with which to develop new materials with useful properties. To take advantage of these developments, fundamental understanding of phase behavior, hydrodynamics, and rheology are required. Current efforts in this area include:

• Development of innovative molecular simulation methods for predicting phase behavior of block copolymers and their mixtures.
• Hydrodynamic modeling of particle-fluid systems for predicting averaged transport properties.
• Numerical analysis of processing flow behavior of polymers that undergo phase change.
• Synthesis and characterization of transport properties of novel branched polymers and polymer particle hybrids. This effort also explores hybrids as electrolytes for next-generation batteries and as media for capturing and sequestering carbon.

Living systems inspire basic transport questions with their beautiful management of transport processes over length scales from molecular to macroscopic. We study transport and fluid physics in these systems in a variety of physiologically important situations.

• Interactions of “randomly” swimming micro-organisms and their ability to produce large-scale coherent motions.
• Micro-engineered systems that mimic transpiration in green plants and functional vascular arrays in living tissues.
• Targeted delivery of therapeutics to brain tumors using convection.
• Electric field-induced sorting and separation of proteins and DNA in lipid bilayers and gels.

Click here to see the faculty involved in this area.