Acquisition of Particle Tracking Instrumentation for Soft Matter and Biomaterials Research and Education

这笔赠款为约翰霍普金斯大学购买软物质和生物材料研究和教育的粒子跟踪仪器提供支持。在粒子跟踪中，胶体被悬浮在复杂的流体中，并对其运动进行测量和分析。对这一运动的研究，可能是由于热涨落、与其他粒子或主体流体的相互作用，或者是外场的作用，为探索复杂流体的基本性质提供了独特的探索，也是一条重要的应用途径。这一新的仪器将使一个新的研究计划成为可能，该研究计划专注于向列相液晶中磁性纳米线的取向有序化、对相互作用和受控自组装的研究。它们将使现有的软玻璃材料和蛋白质水凝胶项目进入新的方向，并将提供必要的新能力，以推进活细胞中细胞骨架的微观流变学研究。这些独特的仪器功能将通过一种方便的用户访问安排向约翰霍普金斯大学材料研究社区的实验者提供。粒子跟踪仪器也将是约翰·霍普金斯大学软物质和生物材料方面的学生培训、教育努力和推广计划的重要资源。粒子跟踪技术的强烈视觉特性使其非常适合向年轻科学家和潜在科学家介绍材料研究。该仪器的具体教育计划之一是将其纳入一门新的跨学科实验室课程，该课程针对的是高水平的本科生和初级研究生。

This grant provides support for the acquisition of particle tracking instrumentation for soft matter and biomaterials research and education at Johns Hopkins University. In particle tracking, colloids are suspended in a complex fluid, and their motion is measured and analyzed. The study of this motion, which can result from thermal fluctuations, interactions with other particles or the host fluid, or the application of external fields, provides a unique probe of fundamental properties of complex fluids as well as an important avenue for applications. This new instrument will make possible a new research program focused on studies of orientational ordering, pair interactions, and controlled self-assembly of magnetic nanowires in nematic liquid crystals. They will enable existing programs on soft glassy materials and protein hydrogels to branch into new directions, and will provide needed new capabilities to advance studies of the microrheology of the cytoskeleton in living cells. These unique instrumental capabilities will be available to experimenters across the Johns Hopkins materials research community through a convenient user access arrangement. The particle-tracking instrument will also be an important resource for student training, educational efforts, and outreach programs in soft matter and biomaterials at Johns Hopkins. The strongly visual nature of particle tracking techniques makes them highly well suited for introducing young scientists and potential scientists to materials research. Among the specific educational plans for the instrument is its integration into the curriculum of a new interdisciplinary laboratory course on complex fluids targeted at upper-level undergraduates and beginning graduate students.