Seminar Speaker: Tim Moore, University of Michigan

Exploiting Anisotropy for Materials Discovery and Design

Abstract

The creation of new colloidal- and nano-materials via self-assembly has the potential to usher in new classes of materials whose functionality depends on both the properties of the building blocks themselves as well as the properties that emerge from their spatial organization. Particles with anisotropic shapes and energetic interactions are now routinely synthesized, and the array of colloidal crystal structures they have self-assembled into continues to grow. A key challenge in harnessing the full potential of these new assemblies is understanding their dependence on different anisotropy dimensions. Computer simulation will play a key role in addressing this challenge as computational approaches are more efficient than experiments for exploring the enormous parameter space of nanoscale self-assembly. Simulation can therefore guide experiments toward promising regions of this design space, in addition to aiding in the interpretation of experimental results. Hence, simulation and experiment can combine synergistically to drive the design of new materials.

Biography

Tim is an assistant research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan and a member of Sharon Glotzer’s research group. His research aims to understand and engineer interactions between nanoscale building blocks toward the development of materials with novel functionality. Tim is also a major contributor to HOOMD-blue, a particle simulation toolkit optimized for performance on graphical processing units. Prior to the University of Michigan, Tim earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University where he worked under the guidance of Clare McCabe to develop coarse-grained molecular models and study biomolecular self-assembly. Prior to Vanderbilt, Tim earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University where he did synthetic polymer chemistry research in Bruce Novak’s lab.