CAREER: Colloidal Dynamics under Electrodiffusiophoresis

该奖项的目标是了解带电粒子在同时存在的电场和离子浓度不均匀的情况下的行为。这些知识将用于指导粒子组装成具有有用性能的材料。整个方法将实验与建模相结合。光学显微镜将用于可视化带电粒子的响应，而输运分析将提供进一步的物理见解。该奖项的见解将促进材料在感兴趣的配置之间快速切换的能力。另一个潜在的好处是分析超低浓度的小颗粒。分析低浓度的病毒和蛋白质对疾病的早期诊断具有重要意义。这个职业奖的主要教育目标是增加历史上在科学和工程领域被边缘化的学生的保留率。拟议的试点方案除了早期参与研究外，还包括社区建设、能力发展。总的来说，综合研究和教育计划将有助于维持培养训练有素的劳动力的渠道，从而推动国家的经济议程。该奖项旨在揭示在电扩散电泳下控制带电胶体个体和集体动力学的物理学。研究方法包括测量粒子在同时受到电位和浓度梯度时所经历的力，进行输运分析以获得机制理解，以及通过光可寻址电极制作复杂的浓度曲线。本研究成果的取得将为交流电动力学和胶体科学领域提供新的概念和实验方法；特别是，该奖项将提供基础知识，以扩展捕获和分析纳米级物体的技术能力。了解电扩散电泳下的胶体动力学将有助于设计先进的可重构材料，以及设计在飞摩尔浓度下进行分析的策略。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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 goal of this award is to understand the behavior of charged particles in the presence of simultaneous electric fields and nonuniform concentration of ions. This knowledge will be used to direct the assembly of particles into materials with useful properties. The overall approach combines experiments with modeling. Optical microscopy will be used to visualize the response of charged particles, while transport analysis will provide further physical insight. Insights from this award will facilitate materials with the ability to rapidly switch between configurations of interest. Another potential benefit is the analysis of small particles at ultralow concentrations. Analyzing viruses as well as proteins at low concentrations is of importance for the early diagnosis of diseases. The main educational goal of this CAREER award is to increase the retention of students from groups that have been historically marginalized in science, and engineering. The proposed pilot program incorporates community building, development of competencies, in addition to early involvement in research. Overall, the integrated research and education plan will help sustain pipelines to a well-trained workforce that can advance the economic agenda of the nation. This award aims to uncover the physics governing the individual and collective dynamics of charged colloids under electrodiffusiophoresis. The research approach consists in measuring the forces that particles experience when subjected to simultaneous gradients of electrical potential and concentration, in performing transport analysis to obtain mechanistic understanding, and in crafting complex concentration profiles through light addressable electrodes. Achieving the outcomes of this research will contribute new conceptual and experimental methods to the fields of AC electrokinetics and colloidal science; in particular, this award will provide fundamental knowledge to extend the capabilities of techniques to trap and analyze nanoscale objects. Understanding colloidal dynamics under electrodiffusiophoresis will facilitate the design of advanced reconfigurable materials, and the design of strategies to perform analysis at femtomolar concentrations.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.