Research
Thrusts
.... .Nanostructures
.... .Biomimetics
..... Bio-Nano
Elliot Douglas - One of our major activities is investigation of the structure-property relationships in liquid crystalline thermosets (LCT's). LCT's are low molar mass liquid crystals with crosslinking endgroups attached. The general structure of such a thermoset can be represented as:
We may also add a hardener, a separate molecule that participates in the cure reaction. By varying the structure of the various pieces of the molecule, we can understand how to control the liquid crystallinity and the resulting properties of the material. For example, we have found that the cure reaction itself can affect the liquid crystallinity. This effect can be described by a non-equilibrium transformation diagram.
For example, curing along the path from A to B results in transformation of the material from an isotropic to a liquid crystalline fluid. We are currently working to understand the details of these transformation diagrams.