2012 MRS Fall Meeting Symposium on Bioinspired Directional Surfaces: From Nature to Engineered Textured Surfaces

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This grant provides partial support for participants at the Symposium on Bioinspired Directional Surfaces: From Nature to Engineered Textured Surfaces, to be held during 2012 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting on November 25-30, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This symposium will bring together experts and researchers from industry, government labs, and academia to establish and extend state-of-the-art experimental and theoretical approaches to the synthesis and characterization of natural and synthetic surfaces that demonstrate unidirectional surface properties. Examples of such natural directional surfaces include textured surfaces on gecko, spider and lizard feet that allow the animals to climb smooth vertical walls. Advancement in our understanding of natural directional surfaces could lead to the development of new synthetic materials and coatings with precisely tuned physicochemical properties to transport water droplets, control imbibition, provide directional adhesion, and exhibit directional friction. Such synthetic directional surfaces are expected to be of great value to the energy and biomedical fields for applications such as directional syringes, microprocessor cooling, high-efficiency hydropower turbines, and nanoscale digital fluidics.The symposium will include invited and contributed talks and a poster session providing ground for intensive and fruitful interactions and discussions among experts and young researchers. Interdisciplinary topics in chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering related to the synthesis and characterization of directional and anisotropic surfaces will be presented to inspire experimental and theoretical research on new generations of coatings and surfaces. The symposium will help to identify the key challenges and technological needs for the rational design of smart surfaces, will spark fruitful discussions in the community, and will attract a new generation of scientists to this critically important field of materials research. Support from this NSF grant will be used to defray conference expenses for graduate and postgraduate students who otherwise would be unable to attend due to a lack of funds. The symposium organizers will specifically promote the participation of students who are members of groups underrepresented in science and engineering.