MRI: Acquisition of Equipment for Thermal and Thermo-Mechanical Analysis of Soft Materials

目标是建立热和热机械材料分析核心设施，以促进软材料的研究和教育。提议的设备包括动态力学、流变学、热重和量热分析，以填补当前有关软材料分析能力的空白。软材料的研究正在进行，包括生物大分子、生物材料（如组织）、合成聚合物、聚合物基纳米复合材料、粘性液体、液晶和凝胶。该设备将增加与软材料相关的生物技术和纳米技术现有项目的影响，并扩大教师和学生接受现代分析仪器方法教育和培训的机会，从而能够追求软物质的新研究。通过现有的跨部门合作，我们有能力为软物质的科学和工程做出重要贡献，而这种新设备的可用性将大大加速这一影响。这类设备的使用将突出强调诸如跨学科科学和规模科学与工程等主题。这些设备将被安置在我们科学技术中心的一个核心设施中，并将通过塔夫茨大学生物工程与生物技术中心进行协调和管理。该设施将由Peggy Cebe（物理系教授）和David Kaplan（生物工程和生物技术中心主任）共同管理，前者在这类设备分析聚合物材料方面拥有丰富的经验，后者在生物衍生软材料方面拥有丰富的经验。本科生和研究生将有机会使用这些设备进行学分研究，并参加暑期课程和短期课程，这些设备将成为特色。研究温度对软物质结构和功能的影响是与新生物材料、组织工程支架和高性能材料应用的新聚合物相关的一个密切关注的领域。所要求的设备将允许对这些源自或模仿生物学的新材料的热行为进行详细的定量评估。这些新材料提供了重要的绿色化学课程，使用自组织概念形成复杂材料系统的新方法，以及聚合物和盐之间的界面对改善机械性能和生物界面的重要性。这些主题的重点包括跨学科科学和规模的科学与工程，以及所需设备的类型，将为材料科学和软材料工程领域的生物技术和纳米技术主题提供新的见解。拟议的设备将支持正在进行的研究工作，同时也为本科生、研究生、博士后研究员和教师的培训和教育提供更好的机会。该设备还将为参加专门暑期项目的学生群体提供机会，例如我们现有的聋哑和重听学生的研究机会。总的来说，由于该设备提供了跨学科的新选择，以扩大软材料的培训和研究，预计更广泛的影响将是巨大的。

The objective is to establish thermal and thermo-mechanical materials analysis core facilities to facilitate research and education in soft materials. The proposed equipment includes dynamic mechanical, rheometric, thermo-gravimetric, and calorimetric analysis to fill voids in current analytical capabilities with respect to soft materials. Research in soft materials is ongoing in areas including biomacromolecules, biomaterials such as tissues, synthetic polymers, polymer-based nanocomposites, viscous liquids, liquid crystals, and gels. The equipment will increase the impact of existing programs in biotechnology and nanotechnology related to soft materials and expand opportunities for faculty and students to be educated in the methods of, and trained on, modern analytical instrumentation, so as to enable the pursuit of new research in soft matter. Through existing inter-departmental collaborations, we are positioned to make important contributions to the science and engineering of soft matter and the availability of this new equipment will greatly accelerate this impact. Emphasis on themes, such as interdisciplinary science and the science and engineering of scale, will be underscored by the use of this type of equipment. The equipment will be housed in a core facility in our Science and Technology Center and will be coordinated and managed through the Tufts University Bioengineering & Biotechnology Center. The facility will be run by Peggy Cebe (Professor, Dept. of Physics) who has extensive experience with this type of equipment for analysis of polymeric materials, and by David Kaplan (Director of the Bioengineering & Biotechnology Center) who has extensive experience with biologically derived soft materials. Undergraduate and graduate students will have opportunities to conduct research for credit using the equipment, and participate in summer programs and short courses in which the equipment will be featuredThe study of the influence of temperature on the structure and function of soft matter is an area of intensive interest related to new biomaterials, scaffolds for tissue engineering and new polymers for high performance material applications. The equipment requested will permit detailed quantitative assessments of the thermal behavior of these novel materials derived from or mimicked from biology. These new materials offer important lessons in green chemistry, new ways to use self-organizing concepts to form complex material systems, and the importance of interfaces between polymers and salts to improve mechanical properties and biological interfaces. The emphasis for these topics includes interdisciplinary science and the science and engineering of scale and the type of equipment requested will provide new insight into biotechnology and nanotechnology topics in the field of materials science and engineering of soft materials. The proposed equipment will support ongoing research efforts, while also providing improved opportunities for training and education of undergraduate, graduate, post doctoral fellow, faculty. The equipment will also provide opportunities with underrepresented groups of students that come for specialized summer programs, such as our existing research opportunities for deaf and hard of hearing students. In total, the broader impact is expected to be substantial due to the new options afforded across disciplines by the equipment to expand training and research in soft materials.