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

这笔拨款为约翰霍普金斯大学软物质和生物材料研究和教育的粒子跟踪仪器的获取提供支持。在粒子跟踪中，胶体悬浮在复杂的流体中，并测量和分析它们的运动。这种运动可以由热波动、与其他粒子或宿主流体的相互作用或外场的应用引起，对这种运动的研究为复杂流体的基本性质提供了独特的探索，也为应用提供了重要的途径。这台新仪器将使向列液晶中磁性纳米线的定向有序、对相互作用和可控自组装的研究成为可能。它们将使软玻璃材料和蛋白质水凝胶的现有程序分支到新的方向，并将提供所需的新能力，以推进活细胞中细胞骨架的微流变学研究。这些独特的仪器功能将通过方便的用户访问安排提供给约翰霍普金斯大学材料研究界的实验者。粒子跟踪仪器也将成为约翰霍普金斯大学软物质和生物材料学生培训、教育和推广项目的重要资源。粒子跟踪技术强烈的视觉特性使它们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整合到针对高年级本科生和研究生的复杂流体的新跨学科实验课程中。

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.