Soft Matter & Self-Assembly Group

Overview

Self-assembly is one of nature's most powerful design strategies: under the right conditions, disordered components spontaneously organize into structures with precisely defined symmetry, geometry, and function. The Soft Matter & Self-Assembly Group works to understand and control this process — both to predict when and why it occurs, and to harness it for the rational design of new materials.

Our research combines experiment and theory. On the experimental side, we synthesize and characterize soft material systems: block copolymers, colloidal suspensions, lyotropic liquid crystals, peptide amphiphiles, and DNA-coated nanoparticles. On the theoretical side, we develop coarse-grained models and free-energy landscapes that capture the essential physics of assembly transitions. We use cryo-TEM and confocal microscopy to image assembled structures in situ, and small-angle X-ray scattering to resolve structural order at sub-nanometer resolution.

Practical applications motivate much of our work. Controlled self-assembly underlies the design of drug-delivery vesicles, anti-fouling surface coatings, structurally colored photonic materials, and responsive hydrogels for sensing and actuation. We maintain active applied collaborations through VIAS Scientific Services and contribute to graduate training across the MME doctoral track.

Research themes

• Block copolymer microphase separation and templating
• Colloidal assembly: entropy-driven, depletion-driven, and DNA-mediated
• Liquid crystal order in biological and synthetic amphiphile systems
• Free-energy calculations and coarse-grained molecular dynamics
• Stimuli-responsive soft materials: pH, temperature, light, ionic strength
• Self-assembly for drug delivery: vesicles, micelles, and hydrogel matrices
• Structural color from colloidal photonic crystals