Planning IUCRC at University of Cincinnati: Center for Hierarchical Emergent Materials (CHEM)

层次化应急材料中心(CHEM)将把在化学合成、流变学、形态、模拟和建模方面具有专业知识的学术研究人员与油漆、颜料、印刷电子产品、生物医疗设备、消费品、轮胎和弹性体的工业制造商结合在一起，开发一种新的方法来设计、模拟和建模影响工程性能的应急多层级结构。学术研究人员已经擅长于构建分子到纳米级的结构来进行靶向自组装。另一方面，工业研究人员同样擅长操纵制造和应用/使用条件，以控制控制油漆、增强弹性体、油墨、保健品和塑料等工程材料的光泽、雾度、生物兼容性、电性和离子传导性以及韧性等特性的紧急结构。一个例子可能是油漆在加工、储存、涂抹和干燥时发生的现象。在这个过程中，颜料纳米聚集体和团聚体可能会发生裂解、重组，最终在复杂的多结构层次中产生跨越原子到宏观尺度的新兴网络结构。通常，多层结构对其结构的成熟度和性能具有时间依赖性，即“4D材料”。当墨水在纸上干燥时就是这种情况，形成了与光相互作用的多层次结构。类似的结构层次结构在轮胎制造中产生，并导致动态层次结构，与结构层次结构相结合，对道路性能非常重要。这种复杂的紧急系统只能由一组学术研究人员与他们的工业合作伙伴密切互动才能研究，这些合作伙伴可以利用所开发的技术。该中心将在不同领域寻找平行方法，将现有的合成、加工和模拟方法应用于新领域，例如，利用增强弹性体中的知识或结构的出现来生产用于锂电池的新型纳米复合固体电解质。一个专注于少数民族、残疾人和女性的本科生研究项目(REU)将与该中心联系在一起，学生们将在三个校区和产业合作伙伴之间进行研究项目。分级材料中心(CHEM)的目标是主要处理化学和生物产品和工艺，在这些产品和工艺中，化学和纳米级的操纵和加工会导致出现对性能有直接影响的复杂的等级结构。这些产品在一系列行业中非常常见，但尚未以连贯的、跨学科的方式进行研究，充分利用技术和科学专业知识和先进技术。该中心的范围是在流变学、结构、模拟和建模可以对复杂的紧急结构产生洞察和发现的领域，例如在油漆、油墨、增强弹性体、复杂的个人保健产品、聚合物化合物、多相催化剂和印刷电子等领域。所有这些领域都依赖于化学和纳米级工程，随后的处理导致了纳米到微米级多层次结构的出现，这些结构直接与工程特性联系在一起。该中心的影响将体现在新的预测模拟和模型、部分通过借用不同应用学科的概念而获得的新方法、利用对这些动态新兴材料的科学理解的新产品和新工艺。分级应急材料中心(CHEM)汇集了来自密歇根大学、辛辛那提大学和特拉华大学三所大学的研究人员团队。该中心将由三部分组成：i.无序的结构层次结构，包括增强的弹性体、合成皮肤和颜料；ii.有序的结构层次结构，包括半结晶材料和合成的自组装方法；iii.表面活性剂和凝聚剂，包括蠕虫状胶束、凝聚体和生物测定组装。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Center for Hierarchical Emergent Materials (CHEM) will couple academic researchers with expertise in chemical synthesis, rheology, morphology, simulation, and modeling; with industrial manufactures of paints, pigments, printed electronics, biomedical devices, consumer products, tires and elastomers to develop a new approach to the design, simulation, and modeling of emergent multi-hierarchical structures that impact engineered properties. Academic researchers have been adept at the construction of molecular to nanoscale architectures for targeted self-assembly. Industrial researchers, on the other hand, have been equally adept at the manipulation of manufacturing and application/use conditions to control emergent structures that govern features like gloss, haze, biocompatibility, electrical and ionic conductivity, and toughness in engineered materials like paint, reinforced elastomers, inks, healthcare products and plastics. An example might be phenomena that occur when paint is processed, stored, applied, and dried. During this process pigment nano-aggregates and agglomerates may breakup, reform, and finally produce an emergent network structure that spans atomic to macroscopic scales in a complex multi-structural hierarchy. Often the multi-hierarchies have time dependence to their structural maturation and performance, i.e. "4D materials". This is the case as an ink dries on paper developing a multi-hierarchical structure that interacts with light. Similar structural hierarchies are produced in tire manufacturing and lead to a dynamic hierarchy, coupled to the structural hierarchy, important to road performance. Such complex emergent systems can only be studied by a team of academic researchers in close interaction with their industrial partners who can take advantage of the technology which is developed. Finding parallel approaches in divergent fields, the center will leverage existing synthetic, processing and simulation approaches in application to new fields, for instance, taking advantage of knowledge or emergence of structure in reinforced elastomers to produce new nanocomposite solid electrolytes for lithium batteries. An undergraduate research program (REU) focusing on minorities, the handicapped, and women will be associated with the Center, with students integrated across the three campuses and industrial partners for research projects. The goal of the Center for Hierarchical Materials (CHEM) is to address mostly chemical and biological products and processes where chemical and nanoscale manipulation and processing lead to the emergence of complex hierarchical structures with direct impact on performance. These products are extremely common across a range of industries, yet have not been studied in a coherent, interdisciplinary manner, making full use of technical and scientific expertise and advances. The scope of the center is in areas where rheology, structure, simulation, and modeling can yield insight and discovery for complex emergent structures such as in paint, inks, reinforced elastomers, complex personal health care products, polymer compounds, heterogeneous catalysts, and printed electronics to name a few areas. All of these areas rely on chemical and nano-scale engineering followed by processing that lead to the emergence of nano-to micron-scale multi-hierarchical structures tied directly to engineering properties. The impact of the center will be in new predictive simulations and models, new approaches garnered partly by borrowing concepts across the different disciplines of application, new products and processes that take advantage of scientific understanding of these dynamic emergent materials. The Center for Hierarchical Emergent Materials (CHEM) assembles a team of researchers from three universities, the University of Michigan, the University of Cincinnati and the University of Delaware. The center will be organized in three thrusts: I. Disordered Structural Hierarchies including reinforced elastomers, synthetic skin, and pigments; II. Ordered Structural Hierarchies including semi-crystalline materials and synthetic approaches to self-assembly; and III. Surfactants and Coacervates including worm-like micelles, coacervates, and biometric assembly.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.