MSE 5230 - [Physics of Soft Materials]

Spring. Next offered 2016-2017. 3 credits.

U. Wiesner.

Covers general aspects of structure, order, and dynamics of soft materials. Typical representatives of this class of materials are polymers, liquid crystals, gels, and surfactant solutions. A general formalism for the description of order in terms of orientation distribution functions is introduced. Examples are given for the measurement of order parameters for partially ordered materials. Finally, the dynamics of soft materials is discussed. Besides transport and flow behavior aspects of the local dynamics of soft materials are presented. Emphasis is put on the discussion of various techniques frequently used (and available at Cornell) for the characterization of structure, order and dynamics of soft materials such as NMR or various scattering techniques. Using examples of modern multidimensional spectroscopic methods the issue of heterogeneous dynamics at the glass transition of amorphous liquids is presented at the end of the class.