Event
MSE Seminar Series: R.M. Briber
Friday, November 13, 2009
1:00 p.m.
Room 2108, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Bldg.
Joanne Kagle
(301) 405-5240
jkagle@umd.edu
The Shape of Polymers: From Thin Films to RNA
R.M. Briber
Professor and Chair
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
University of Maryland
The conformation of polymer molecules has a natural length scale in the range of 10s of nanometers. This length scale is set by thermodynamics through the interplay of the entropy of the chain and the energetics of monomer interactions. Understanding and control of this length scale is critical for a broad range scientific issues in polymers, ranging from behavior of thin polymer films, structural templating using block copolymer morphology, and the functioning of biopolymers such as RNA and proteins. Experiments using small angle neutron and X-ray scattering to study the chain conformation of synthetic and biopolymers will be described.
