Sven Holger Behrens
Associate Professor
Contact Information
Building: Bunger-Henry
Office: 409
Phone: 404.385.8186
Fax: 404.894.2866
email
Mailing Address
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Chemical &
Biomolecular Engineering
311 Ferst Drive, N.W.
Atlanta, GA 30332-0100
Links
Sven Holger Behrens
Education
Diploma in Physics 1995, University of Goettingen, Germany
Ph.D. 1999, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich
Bio
Dr. Behrens joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in July 2007. Previously, he worked as the head of a research laboratory at the BASF headquarters in Ludwigshafen, Germany for five years.
Research Interests
Dr. Behrens’ research aims at using the solvent-mediated interaction between polymers or colloidal species (solid particles, emulsion droplets, micelles, vesicles, or other nanometer or micrometer sized objects) to create materials with exciting new properties and high potential for industrial or medical application. Doing so in a rational way often requires a better understanding of the underlying materials design principles than is currently available. Open scientific questions encountered along the way concern, for instance:
• the response of polymers or colloids to changes in the surrounding medium
• the interaction between two or more colloidal building blocks in different environments
• their dynamics of association and self-assembly into larger super-structures
Dr. Behrens’ work addresses these questions experimentally by thoroughly characterizing the conformation and electrical charging states of polymers and colloids in different environments, performing high resolution measurements of colloidal forces and interaction energies, and by monitoring association and release processes. Techniques are adapted to the problems at hand, with a focus on light scattering, electrokinetic and microscopic approaches, and are complemented by theoretical modeling.