U.S.-Germany: Cooperative Research on Surfactant Self-Aggregation on Solid Surfaces and in Pores

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This award supports the PI and several graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral students from North Carolina State University in a collaboration withMartin Schoen, Gerhard Findenegg, and Sabine Klapp of the Physics Department at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. The research will focus on the self-assembly of surfactants on solid surfaces and in nano-porous solids. Such self-assembly processes are as yet only poorly understood, but are crucial in applications ranging from sensors, thin-film technologies, lithographic processes, electronic devices , and sol-gel nano-coatings to biomimetic materials. They are also of great fundamental interest, since many unique features of the self-assembly are as yet unexplained. The phenomena of interest spans a range of length scales from the atomic to the microscopic and of time scales from picoseconds to microseconds, so that new simulation methodology or theoretical techniques are required to study the systems successfully. The project combines the expertise in experimental and dynamical simulation studies of surfactant self-assembly of the Berlin group with the extensive experience of the NC State group in equilibrium properties of host phases confined within nano-porous materials.The broader impacts of this collaboration are that it increases interactions between US researchers and those in Germany, it promotes collaborative opportunities and career development for US students, and it enhances the infrastructure for research and education by laying the groundwork for future international research and education opportunities.