Topics in Soft Condensed Matter Theory: From Macromolecules to Hierarchically Structured Soft Materials

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Soft matter refers to materials such as polymers, liquid crystals, surfactant solutions, colloidal suspensions, and lipids. These materials are commonly found in plastics, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs and biomaterials. One of the most intriguing properties of these materials is their ability to self-assemble into complex hierarchical structures with ordering over many length scales. Self-assembled hierarchically structured materials are paramount to advanced materials, and more importantly, to biological organisms as we are the perfect example of complex self-assembly. The objective of the proposed research is to develop molecule-based theories to explain and predict the emergence, stability and physical properties of self-assembled soft materials. The knowledge gained from our research will be an enabling factor in the engineering of affordable nanostructured soft materials with desired properties for applications such as drug delivery vehicles and data storage media.