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CFE Faculty Collaborations

  • Adsorption of Polymerized Micelles into Structured Layers. L. M. Walker and S. Biggs. Collaboration started during Simon's sabbatical leave at CMU. We probed the structure of adsorbed layers of polymerized micelles with Atomic Force Microscopy.

  • Bubble aggregation driven by thermocapillary flow - Experimental results and theory of motions of bubbles near hot walls provide evidence of the importance of thermocapillary flow and thermophoretic motion between adjacent bubbles. This work proves the hypothesis that thermocapillary flow can explain the 20 year old experimental observation of bubble aggregation on electrodes during water electrolysis. (P. Sides and J. L. Anderson)

  • Preparing thermally reversible model gels and study their physical chemical characterization by light scattering methods, along with the associated rheological behavior. (G.C. Berry, G. D. Patterson and B. A Armitage (Department of Chemistry))

  • Measuring intersurface forces and disjoining pressure in thin liquid films using colloidal-probe AFM (J.W. Schneider, L.R. White and D.C. Prieve, Ph.D. project)

  • Characterizing reactively grafted PEG films with scanning-angle reflectometry and streaming potential measurements (J.W. Schneider, R.D. Tilton, Ph.D. project)

  • Morphology of polymerized surfactant microstructures adsorbed onto silica using non-contact electrostatic imaging (J.W. Schneider, L.M. Walker, Post-doc project)

  • Reversible aggregation of bioactive liposomes using dynamic light scattering (J.W. Schneider, A. Morfesis, Senior Honors project)

  • Colloidal Forces in Polymer/Surfactant Mixtures. Two joint PhD students have systematically studied and exploited polymer and surfactant co-adsorption and complexation to manipulate the qualitative and quantitative features of colloidal interaction energies. (R.D. Tilton and D.C. Prieve.)

  • Dynamic Wetting in Surfactant Solutions. The two groups have worked together to relate adsorption kinetics and isotherms at the solid/liquid, vapor/liquid and solid/vapor interfaces to deduce dynamic wetting mechanisms. (S. Garoff and R. D. Tilton.)

  • Complex Fluids Engineering for Pharmaceutical Processing. PhD and undergraduate students working within these groups have collaborated to map the macroscopic rheological behavior of suspensions in complex solutions containing associating polymers and surfactants. Quantitative and qualitative changes in rheology have been interpreted through direct measurements of polymer/surfactant complexation, phase stability and co-adsorption to solid/liquid interfaces. (R.D. Tilton, L.M. Walker, S. Garoff and T.M. Przybycien.)

  • Elasticity Effects in Moving Contact Lines. Collaborating on a project of one of Steve Garoff's PhD students investigating moving contact lines. We are quantifing the effects of viscoelasticity (bulk) on the problem. (S. Garoff and L. M. Walker, Ph. D project.)

  • Theory and experiment related to convection-driven self-assembly of particles, drops and bubbles on surfaces due to electric and thermal fields (J. Anderson, S. Garoff, P. Sides and D. Prieve)