U.S.-Germany: Cooperative Research on Surfactant Self-Aggregation on Solid Surfaces and in Pores

该奖项支持PI和北卡罗来纳州立大学的几名研究生、本科生和博士后，他们与德国柏林工业大学物理系的Martin Schoen、Gerhard Findenegg和Sabine Klapp合作。这项研究将集中在表面活性剂在固体表面和纳米多孔固体中的自组装。这种自组装过程目前还知之甚少，但在传感器、薄膜技术、光刻工艺、电子设备、溶胶-凝胶纳米涂层和仿生材料等应用中都是至关重要的。它们也具有很大的基本利益，因为自组装的许多独特特征至今仍未得到解释。感兴趣的现象跨越了从原子到微观的一系列长度尺度和从皮秒到微秒的时间尺度，因此需要新的模拟方法或理论技术来成功地研究系统。该项目结合了柏林集团在表面活性剂自组装的实验和动态模拟研究方面的专业知识，以及NC国家集团在纳米多孔材料内主体相平衡性质方面的丰富经验。这种合作的更广泛影响是，它增加了美国研究人员和德国研究人员之间的互动，促进了美国学生的合作机会和职业发展，并通过为未来的国际研究和教育机会奠定基础，加强了研究和教育的基础设施。

This award supports the PI and several graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral students from North Carolina State University in a collaboration withMartin Schoen, Gerhard Findenegg, and Sabine Klapp of the Physics Department at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. The research will focus on the self-assembly of surfactants on solid surfaces and in nano-porous solids. Such self-assembly processes are as yet only poorly understood, but are crucial in applications ranging from sensors, thin-film technologies, lithographic processes, electronic devices , and sol-gel nano-coatings to biomimetic materials. They are also of great fundamental interest, since many unique features of the self-assembly are as yet unexplained. The phenomena of interest spans a range of length scales from the atomic to the microscopic and of time scales from picoseconds to microseconds, so that new simulation methodology or theoretical techniques are required to study the systems successfully. The project combines the expertise in experimental and dynamical simulation studies of surfactant self-assembly of the Berlin group with the extensive experience of the NC State group in equilibrium properties of host phases confined within nano-porous materials.The broader impacts of this collaboration are that it increases interactions between US researchers and those in Germany, it promotes collaborative opportunities and career development for US students, and it enhances the infrastructure for research and education by laying the groundwork for future international research and education opportunities.