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Credit: 1 course unit
Elective course
Catalog description:
Soft matter describes materials that are neither pure crystalline solids with long range atomic order or pure liquids characterized by one simple viscosity. Many times “soft materials” display both solid and liquid like behavior depending on the timescale of the applied stress. Colloids, polymers, amphiphiles, liquid crystals, and biomacromolecules are types of soft matter. The focus of this course is on the characteristics common to soft materials namely their length scale, fragile binding energies or proximity to phase transitions, dynamics and propensity to self-assemble.
Prerequisites:
Chemistry 102 ; MSE 220 (Intro. to Materials) or equivalent (Concurrent is okay).
Textbook(s) and/or other required materials:
R. A. L. Jones. Soft Condensed Matter .
New York
:
Oxford
University
Press. ISBN: 0198505892.
I. W. Hamley. Introduction to Soft Matter: Polymers, Colloids, Amphiphiles and Liquid Crystals.
John Wiley.
ISBN: 0471899518.
Topics Covered:
- Forces, energies and time scales
- Phase transitions
- Colloidal dispersions
- Polymers
- Gelation
- Liquid Crystallinity
- Supramolecular self-assembly
- Soft matter in nature
Class/Laboratory schedule:
Lecture – 3 hr/week
Person preparing description and date:
R. J. Composto
July 2007
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