The on-going demand for miniaturized optical and on-chip photonic systems of the future has led to a few potential solutions in the literature. Recent advances in van der Waals and 2-dimensional materials signal a bright future for the next generation, compact electronic and photonic devices. With reduced dimensionality and material...
Atomistic methods offer a powerful set of tools in the study of materials systems, as they allow materials scientists to ask questions with a high degree of specificity. They are well suited for studying and designing energy materials, critical due to the climate crisis, in part due to their ability...
A fundamental materials science question is “why and how will this material form?” The experimental,computation, and time resources necessary to answer this question consume significant resources due to the
predominantly trial-and-error based approaches common in materials research. This dissertation reintroduces
a number of fundamental thermodynamics-based tools for the study of...
Understanding organization of soft materials on mesoscopic and nanoscopic scales is importantfor materials design. In this regard, non-van der Waals interactions such as hydrogen
bonding and electrostatic interactions offer great opportunities due to the richness and diversity
in morphological structures they produce. The primary reason for this is that these...
Since its introduction as an artist’s pigment in the earth 20th century, titanium white has become one of the most common white pigments. The early formulations of titanium white contained anatase, which has been studied to facilitate degradation of oil paint under UV illumination. Around the 1940s production shifted to...
Biomineralization relies on the regulation of localized environments to control how minerals are formed. Through the use of confinement and specific additives, the organism is able to change the energy landscape of nucleation and growth to build single crystals with unusual morphologies. In order to better understand the environments in...
Selecting the best material to deliver optimum performance in real-world applications is one of the most significant challenges in engineering. Hundreds of thousands of computationally-predicted, but experimentally unexplored materials exist today in the public inorganic material databases as candidates for consideration. This thesis discusses three projects in the domain of...
In this dissertation, I summarize my findings of the dynamics of colloidal suspensions over a large range of volume fractions in two systems: drop impact and film rupture. The existence of a deformable surface in both these systems allows me to capture the consequences of non-Newtonian flow using high-speed imaging....
Elemental powder blends are an emerging alternative to prealloyed powders for high-throughput alloy design via additive manufacturing techniques due to their flexibility, low cost, and ease of customization. This dissertation investigates elemental alloying elements (Sc and Zr) which are high-melting and highly reactive, unlike previous work which focused on more...
Protein-based biomaterials are widely used in biomedical applications and mechanical support because of their novel structural flexibility, biocompatibility and mechanical properties. Protein-based biomaterials outperform traditional synthetic materials in various environments as traditional materials lack the diverse chemical functionalities that proteins offer. Novel bioinspired techniques such as directed evolution offer the...