ABSTRACT: Polymeric materials are ubiquitous in the modern world, finding use in everything from coffee cups to truck beds to drug-eluting stents and carbon-fiber reinforced aircraft components. As our demands of these materials increase, the need for improved properties, added functionality and advanced manufacturing processes grows, and the elucidation and application of key composition-structure-processing-properties relations becomes increasingly critical. In this talk, following a brief overview of the range of work being pursued by my group, two examples of such efforts are presented.
In the first case, organic sol-gel chemistry is introduced as a novel means for the generation of porous polymeric materials. This approach to materials processing is applied to the preparation of tissue engineering scaffolds. The method is shown to be capable of producing biocompatible structures enabling the growth of mammalian cells, and applicable to multiple relevant classes of polymers. The ability to design scaffolds with specific functional properties is also demonstrated – in this instance, a shape memory transition active at body temperature.
In the second case, polymer nanolaminates are introduced as a new and promising class of (nano)composites, with an impressive array of extreme barrier and mechanical properties. An automated spray deposition system has been built for the purpose of producing free standing nanolaminate films of arbitrary composition, and two families of model nanolaminates have been produced with the goal of understanding the origins of the properties of this class of materials. The permeation behavior and dynamic mechanical response of these model nanolaminates are studied in-depth, leading to conclusions with significant implications for both nanolaminates in particular and nanocomposites in general.
Bio Sketch – D. F. Schmidt
Dr. Schmidt graduated with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University (1998) with a B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering and a B.S. in Chemistry following research experience with the CMU Buckyball Project. He earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering at Cornell University (2003) under the direction of Prof. Emmanuel P. Giannelis on the subject of silicone nanocomposites. He was a post-doc in the first BASF group to locate in Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn’s Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg France, where he developed nanoporous materials for thermal insulation (tradenamed SLENTITE®, scale-up in progress).
He joined the Department of Plastics Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2005, where he has pursued work on polymer nanocomposites, polymer networks, pre-ceramic polymers and sustainable materials. In 2006 he was awarded a Summer Faculty Fellowship in the group of Dr. Rich Vaia at the US Air Force Research Labs, where he worked on new classes of nanocomposites termed nanolaminates as well as porous shape memory materials. In 2009 he was the first recipient of the Mark and Elisia Saab Endowed Professorship in Sustainable Plastics Engineering. In 2012 he was recognized at the Massachusetts State House as as University Research Champion by the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), and in 2013 he was an invited participant in the BASF Insights Program in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
His work has been cited over 1,400 times in the literature, and he is listed as an inventor in 9 families of patents and patent applications. He has been a tenured Associate Professor since 2011.