Join the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering for the following seminar by Fernando A. Escobedo, Samuel W. and Diane M. Bodman Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University. All are welcome to enjoy light refreshments at 10:15 a.m. in the Scholar's Lounge prior to the seminar. 

Abstract

The ever-expanding ability to synthesize diverse micro- and nano-particles, and polymers and oligomers with highly controlled sequences over a wide range of chemistries, has fueled the interest for their use as building blocks to assemble novel soft materials with potentially unique properties. Molecular simulations studies over the last two decades have revealed many correlations between the features of such building blocks (like shape and chemical selectivity) and the structure of the resulting self-assembled morphologies, which constitute the basis for the rules of designing novel and complex morphologies. In this presentation I will present several vignettes to highlight several such lessons which our group has contributed to unveil, some of them involving the formation of different types of nanoparticle alloys, others the formation of network phases with polyphillic molecules; some relating to thermodynamic drivingforces and others related to kinetics effects on nucleation and binding processes. The crucial but often overlooked role of entropy will also be underscored through various examples.

Biography

Fernando A. Escobedo is the Samuel W. and Diane M. Bodman Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University. He received a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of San Agustin in Peru (1987) and worked for 5 years as an R&D engineer in a Peruvian company before coming to the U.S. for graduate studies. He received a Chemical Engineering M.S. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1993) and the Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1997). He joined the faculty of Cornell University at the end of 1998. He received the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation new faculty award, 1999, the Career Award from the National Science Foundation, 2000, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship, 2004, and the AIChE CoMSEF Impact Award, 2012. He also won an award for teaching excellence from the College of Engineering (2003).