Organic semiconductors are an active area of research with great promise for delivering next generation electronics and clean energy technologies. As the field matures, understanding the connection between molecular structure, materials’ properties, and device performance will be critical in finding the right material for an intended application. An effective strategy...
This thesis centers around the development and application of novel high throughput lithography tools. These advances help: 1) establish the field of nanocombinatorics, where massive libraries (termed megalibraries) of materials can be prepared in a positionally encoded manner and then screened for functional activity, and 2) advance stereolithographic 3D printing...
Functional electronic materials are difficult to design due to the complex interplay among chemistry, atomic structure, and electrical properties. This dilemma is further amplified in transition metal compounds which can defy the band-theory description of non-correlated electrons. Exploring the vast possible design space completely with experiments or first-principles simulations is...
SAMDI-MS (Self-Assembled Monolayers for MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry) couples the use of chemically-defined self-assembled monolayers of alkane thiolates on gold surfaces with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for rapid characterization of the surfaces. Reactions performed on the surfaces can be quantified directly by detection of the reaction substrates and products. This rapid detection...
Electrostatic interactions mediated by ionic environments play a central role in physical processes across materials science, chemistry and biology. Key biological phenomena, such as the condensation and packaging of DNA, ion transport across cellular membranes and the enzymatic action of proteins, rely on the complex interplay between nanoscale electrostatic, osmotic...
Colloidal crystal engineering with DNA offers new opportunities for materials scientists to build and program the structures of superlattices beyond what can be accomplished in Nature with atomic crystal lattices. Thus far, such materials primarily have been studied for their optical properties due to the insulating nature of the DNA...
The heart of computational materials science lies in providing fundamental insights and understanding of materials behavior and properties across different scales. The significance of this task is highlighted by the Materials Genome Initiative and the emergence of computational tools and frameworks such as materials by design, microstructure sensitive design, and...
Nucleic acids not only are the building blocks of life but also a class of attractive macromolecular therapeutics. However, the delivery of therapeutic oligonucleotides into cells has been a major challenge due to their large size and highly negatively charged backbone. Spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) are a class of emerging...
Non-covalent and ion-specific interactions in the context of charged polymers are ubiquitous in nature and in synthetic applications. For example, mussels utilize metal-coordinate bonds to form tough underwater adhesion to a wide range of substrates. The sandcastle worm uses coacervation of oppositely charged polymers to build robust structures for self-defense....
To relate the mechanical responses of hard-soft copolymer systems with their microstructures, a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) approach is employed. With the generic bead-spring polymer model mapped from atomistic simulations, this dissertation first studies the morphology of structures with various hard-soft compositions and interactions between hard beads. Following that, this...