Soft materials on the nanoscale

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Technology is pushing device production and demanding material understanding on the nanoscale. It is perhaps surprising that even when we have a detailed understanding of a bulk material that does not mean we have a similar understanding for nanoscale samples of the same material. In fact there are certainly examples where the nanoscale material behaviour would not even be predictable from bulk properties. This dearth of understanding is most prevalent for glassy material for which we can not even claim an understanding in bulk. Such deviations from "expected" behaviour is often most pronounced for what are called soft materials (polymers, colloids, proteins, glasses). The reason for this is that these materials often have characteristic length scales that are significantly larger than those of simple atomic or molecular crystalline solids. The study of glassy polymer films is one of high technological importance and has been the subject of much study - and almost equal controversy. We propose a set of experiments that has tremendous promise to alleviate all of the existing controversy, and also lead to a thorough understanding of nanoscopic glassy materials. We also propose to develop a process where fairly common experimental techniques can be used to probe the depth dependent properties of protein adsorbed onto biomaterials.