The Institute for Polymer Research Presentation - Professor Mark Matsen
Abstract:
Block copolymers are polymer molecules with two (or more) chemical distinct portions, generally labelled A and B. The A and B components tend to be incompatible, which causes the molecules to self-assemble into various elaborate nano-structures with their A and B blocks in separate A- and B- rich domains. Self-consistent field theory (SCFT) has been remarkably successful in predicting the geometry of these ordered phases and the transitions between them. However, SCFT has some shortcomings due to the fact it incorporates the mean-field approximation. These can, in principle be overcome by performing computer simulations, but it is impractical to perform conventional particle-based simulations for realistic conditions because of the sheer size of polymeric molecules. Fortunately this obstacle has recently been overcome by applying a transformation that converts their particle-based Hamiltonian into a mathematically equivalent field-based Hamiltonian. We demonstrate a variant of the method called Monte Carlo field-theoretic simulations (MC-FTS) on the simple symmetric diblock copolymer melt
Biography:
Professor Matsen received a BSc in Mathematical Physics from the University of Simon Fraser 1987) and his PhD in Physics from the University of Guelph (1992). After graduating, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department at the University of Washington and then in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. He was then hired in 1996 as a Lecturer in the School of Mathematical and Physical Science at the University of Reading, where he moved up through the ranks to Reader in 2000 and then Professor in 2005. Matsen moved to the University of Waterloo in 2013, where he now holds a joint position in Departments in Chemical Engineering and Physics & Astronomy.