Graduate Student Seminar

April 18, 2025

10:00 a.m. ET

McConomy Auditorium, First Floor Cohon University Center

Nanocomposite Synthesis via Brush-Grafted Particles

Polymer nanocomposites consisting of inorganic particles embedded in a polymer matrix are attractive platforms for complex materials design. Combining the vastly different chemical and physical characteristics of these material types allows for mechanical, chemical, electromagnetic, or combinations of these properties not possible with either component alone. While such composites therefore offer a massive parameter space to tailor material performance, the process of designing new, useful nanocomposites is not always as straightforward as simply blending a set of nanoparticle building blocks into a soft macromolecular matrix. There is ample opportunity for next-generation composite designs to both maximize material performance and to introduce new emergent phenomena that occur when nanoparticle organization within the matrix is intentionally programmed.

In this talk, I will highlight the Macfarlane lab’s progress in designing nanocomposites via the integration of supramolecular chemistry, polymer synthesis, and materials processing. Our group has established a suite of “brush particles” that are inherently composite architectures containing rigid inorganic particle cores, soft polymer brush coatings, and supramolecular binding groups that dictate interactions between the polymer and nanoparticle components. Key advancements presented will include synthesis methods to achieve macroscopically scalable composites with ~85 wt% inorganic content that remain mechanically robust and readily processible. Additionally, the first “self-assembly” method capable of scalably fabricating macroscopic, fully 3D composites consisting entirely of nanoparticle superlattice arrays will be discussed. I will outline the advancements that guide our thinking about composite synthesis, underscore key design motifs for brush particle-based nanocomposites, and detail how materials chemistry and processing permit the formation of materials with controlled hierarchical organization across 7 orders of magnitude in length scale simultaneously. 

Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane
Paul M. Cook Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Prof. Rob Macfarlane has been a faculty member at MIT since 2015, and is currently the Paul M. Cook Associate Professor of Materials Science in the department of materials science. Prior to joining MIT, he obtained his PhD in chemistry in 2013 at Northwestern University, after which he was awarded Kavli Nanoscience Institute post- doctoral fellowship at Caltech. Prof. Macfarlane is the recipient of multiple awards for his research, including a 2016 AFOSR Young Investigator Award, a 2017 NSF CAREER Award, the 2017 ACS Unilever Award, a 2019 3M Non-Tenured faculty Award, a 2023 ACS PMSE Early Investigator Award, and a 2025 PECASE. He is an expert in the fields of self-assembly, nanocomposites, materials chemistry, and nanomaterials processing, and his research lab sits at the interface of these fields to establish new materials fabrication techniques. His lab’s research focuses on developing systems-level approaches to materials synthesis, where structural features at the molecular, nano, and macroscopic length scales act together as integrated design handles to control a material’s hierarchical ordering. These materials range from inorganic nanoparticles to synthetic polymers to biomacromolecules like DNA, and the structures have potential utility in diverse applications ranging from energy storage to protective coatings.



 

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