Prediction Of The Morphologies Of Self-Assembled Systems

Principal Investigator: Prof Lam Yeng Ming

Nanometer sized structures are now being commonly used for a variety of applications. The use of self-assembled morphologies is a simple yet robust route of production of functional nanoscopic structures. These morphologies are perhaps the perfect reactor for these types of structures because of its stability, uniformity and simplicity.

This project make use of mesoscale modelling based on Dynamic Mean Field Density Functional Theory to study the transitional properties of these novel systems to gain in-depth understanding of the properties of these condition dependent morphologies which may in turn help in extending the applications. This numerical method to calculate the collective diffusion relaxation of block copolymer systems originated from Prof Hans Fraaije in Leiden. We aim to be able to use this method to predict the morphology of a system based on its experimentally determined interactions with different environments.

Experimentally obtained micellar morphology