Chinedum Osuji, University of Pennsylvania

"Perfecting Structural Order and Controlling Mass Transport in Nanostructured Soft Materials"

Abstract:

Controlling structure and thereby manipulating the properties of matter is a central concern for the chemical and physical sciences. This talk examines approaches for directed self-assembly of nanostructured systems to create useful materials, including single crystals and materials with bespoke textures. Our focus is on self-assembly of block copolymers and liquid crystals. The ability to precisely control their chemical functionality combined with the readily tunable characteristic length scales (~1-100 nm) of their self-assembled mesophases position these systems as a versatile and attractive class of materials for several applications, including membranes for size and chemo-selective transport, to optics, and lithography. We describe recent developments in nanostructured membranes fabricated from self-assembled materials that are compelling as they circumvent the limitations of pathway tortuosity and size-dispersity of transport-regulating features found in conventional membranes. We focus attention on the ability to fabricate such membranes using scalable processes that can be adapted to industrial settings. The performance of these emerging membranes in lab-scale testing suggests that they may be viable in several applications where tight regulation of the transport of molecular and ionic species is desired.

Bio:

Dr. Osuji is the Eduardo D. Glandt Presidential Professor, and Chair, in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and a secondary member of the faculty in Materials Science and Engineering, at University of Pennsylvania. He is an Associate Editor for Macromolecules and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society (2021-2024). He leads an experimental research group focused on structure and dynamics of soft materials and complex fluids. Topics of interest include structure-property relationships in ordered soft materials, directed self-assembly of block copolymers and molecular materials, and rheology of dense, disordered systems.

Prof. Osuji received his undergraduate degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell followed by his Ph.D., also in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT in 2003. From 2003-2005 he was a Senior Scientist at a startup company, Surface Logix Inc., before moving to Harvard as a Postdoctoral Associate in Applied Physics (2005-2007). He was a member of the faculty at Yale University in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering from 2007-2018 before moving to the University of Pennsylvania.

Prof. Osuji is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (2008). He received an Office of Naval Research's Young Investigator award and a 3M Nontenured Faculty award in 2012. He is the recipient of the Dillon Medal of the American Physical Society (2015), the Hendrick C. Van Ness Award (2019), and the Nano Research Young Investigator Award (2019). In 2022 he received the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW).