Title：Structures and diffusion in homopolymer and conetwork gels

Speaker：Prof. Kay Saalwächter (Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg)

Host：Soft Matter Research Institute

Time：June 14th, 2024 (Friday), 10:00am

Location: 324 lecture hall, South China Institute of soft matter science and Technology (No. 2 building, North Science Park)

Abstract：

　　Amphiphilic conetworks (ACN) are an interesting class of materials with relevant applications in the life sciences, e.g. as soft contact lens material or as scaffold for tissue engineering. Knowledge and control over their nanoscale mesh structure is relevant for their mechanical properties and the transport of e.g. nutrients. The talk will provide an introduction to physical characterization techniques suitable for microstructural investigations of polymer networks and gels, with some focus on proton low-resolution multiple-quantum (MQ) NMR. Our most recent work concerns model ACNs made via end-linking of star precursors of poly(ethylene glycol), PEG, and poly(?-caprolactone), PCL. These can be swollen with either non-selective or selective solvents. Swelling in water will create a nanometer-scale phase separated structure, which we study with low- and high-resolution MQ NMR, pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR diffusometry of differently sized probe molecules as well as small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS).

Brief Biography：

　　Kay Saalwächter was born in 1970 and received his PhD in Physical Chemistry (NMR) from Universität Mainz, supervised by Prof. H. W. Spiess. He has been a professor of Experimental Physics at the Institute of Physics at Martin-Luther-University (MLU) Halle-Wittenberg since 2006. He has held various honorary positions such as director of MLU's Institute of Physics, the faculty's Vice Dean of Research, and review board member for Polymer Science of the DFG. Currently he is the speaker of the integrated Research Training Group of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB-TRR 102 Polymers: More than just Random Coils and MLU's family representative. By 2021, he has (co)authored about 170 articles in peer-reviewed journals with ca. 8000 citations and an h-index of 50 (ISI). His research interests are mainly focused on investigation of structure and dynamics in complex soft materials, mostly using established and newly developed (solid-state) NMR spectroscopy methods as well as complementary techniques (rheology, SAXS, dielectric spectroscopy, DSC); segmental and chain dynamics; diffusion; molecular and mesoscale structure in polymer melts, dry and swollen elastomers, semicrystalline polymers and block copolymers, liquid crystals and liquid-crystalline polymers.