Soft Matter Sample Environment Suite for Canadian Small Angle Neutron Scattering

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Nanomaterials are becoming increasingly common on the consumer and industrial market, providing smaller, lighter and more durable products with unique properties. Nanoscale materials are impacting all aspects of everyday life: from the emulsions in makeup and pharmaceutical delivery to the dyes and pigments in our consumer products. In addition to these current uses, Advanced Materials research is creating new applications: self-healing materials for uncrackable cell phone screens, biocompatible assemblies for smart drug delivery, and even packaging materials capable of sensing and/or eliminating chemical and microbial contaminants.***Neutron scattering has proven to be one of the most powerful methods for the investigation of structure and dynamics of condensed matter on atomic length and time scales. Neutron techniques have a broad range of applications in physics, chemistry, magnetism and superconductivity, material sciences, cultural heritage, biology, soft matter, health, and environmental and climate science. ***Compared to other soft matter techniques, small angle neutron scattering (SANS) offers many advantages for the study of biological, polymer, food stuffs among other soft matter systems at the molecular level. For example, SANS is sensitive to light elements (e.g., H, C, N, O, etc.) commonly found in biological systems and does not rely on bulky fluorophore or spin-label probes, which can drastically alter the physical properties of these systems. SANS is ideal for studying organic assemblies, such as lipoproteins, cell membranes, polymers and nanoparticles, due to the broad range of scattering length density (SLD) contrasts achievable by varying the 2H/1H (heavy/light water) ratios of the solvent, protein, and lipid. Scattering from individual components of the system, i.e., lipid, solvent, or protein, can be highlighted or suppressed through contrast matching, allowing for robust determination of the molecularization organization and structure of particles.***This instrumentation will support current NSERC, Canada Research Chair and industrial collaboration projects by the proposal's PIs and frequent users. Furthermore, the requested instrumentation will provide new opportunities for collaborative, international research that will train numerous HQP. Research areas this infrastructure will support are varied and include (i) fundamental research regarding cellular membranes; (ii) development of novel liposomal and other biomaterial formulations for delivery of pharmaceutical agents and as platforms for MRI or PET contrast agents; (iii) design of new semiconducting polymers for advanced electronicspolymer nanoparticles; and (iv) polymer membranes for fuel cells.**