Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Polymers

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The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) on Polymers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst will integrate the expertise of 27 faculty members and 26 graduate students from seven departments. Fundamental challenges in polymer synthesis, physics, and engineering will be addressed in Directed Polymer-Based Assemblies (Integrated Research Group, IRG-I), which will seek hierarchically ordered polymer systems based on nanoscopic elements and nanoconfinement relevant to functional nanodevices. Polymer Surface Instabilities (IRG-II) will define a new materials design paradigm, one that looks to elastic instabilities to control polymer surface morphology, arranging structures resulting from instabilities into hierarchies and exploiting instability dynamics to generate rapid and selective response. The Center will support several Seed Programs. One large Seed effort, Polymers in Ionic Liquids, will bring polymers and ionic liquids together in solid, fluid and interfacial environments. The unique characteristics of ionic liquids will foster new chemistries, materials, and processing strategies along with means to resolve longstanding materials problems from across the polymer science field. Another large seed on Polymer Surfaces for Bacterial Control and Amphiphilic Polyelectrolytes, shows potential for rapid scientific growth, which should mirror expansion of associated technologies in society. These research efforts will be significantly enhanced by the Center's involvement in the Global Research Laboratory at Seoul National University, the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University, and collaborative efforts between the Center and national laboratories. Strong ties have been established between the MRSEC and undergraduate educational programs at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, the University of California at Riverside, the University of Vermont, and Howard University. This sweeping expertise uniquely positions the Center to address the proposed interdisciplinary research problems and ensures an environment suited to educating and stimulating students at the forefront of materials science and engineering. The Center operates twelve Shared Experimental Facilities to enable Center researchers to perform forefront research on maintenance-intensive, state-of-the-art equipment at minimal cost to the individual researcher. To stimulate research in energy conversion, a pressing societal problem we face today, the Center opened a Photovoltaics Facility, allowing researchers to fabricate and measure the efficiency of photovoltaic devices under an inert atmosphere. Along with several other MRSECs, the Center recently formed the Materials Research Facilities Network, vastly expanding the instrumentation capabilities of any one Center and promotes the greater use of NSF-funded instrumentation by researchers across the U.S. The Center has multiple strong ties to industrial and government laboratories. The Center benefits from close interactions with the Center for UMass-Industry Research on Polymers and the Research Liaison and Development Office, two effective conduits for technology transfer to the industrial sector. MassNanoTech and Mass-Crest, two campus institutes, respectively focus on nanoscience- and energy-related research projects of interest to industry.