Center for Complex Fluids Engineering

Research

Industrial Interactions - Resources - Collaborations

Industrial
The practical importance of complex fluids engineering has nucleated strong interactions between the Center and a variety of industries. These interactions take several forms ranging from formal workshops, the formation of an industrial advisory board through individual faculty consulting.

CFE Facilities and Resources
Researchers in the CCFE have extensive experimental facilities available.

The Center houses impressive experimental facilities. The CPS Educational program maintains two laboratories for basic colloid and polymer characterization. Individual faculty have both off the shelf and custom built equipment and facilities for the measurement of interfacial properties, interaction energies and macroscopic properties. The Center often performs experimental studies for exploratory or consulting purposes, the relevant contact information is provided below along with a list of equipment currently housed in the CPS Educational Program Laboratories.

PPG Industries CPS Laboratory Facilities (Doherty Hall, CMU campus)

Colloid and Surface Characterization Equipment

Quantasorb Surface Area Analyzer (Gas Adsorption)
Cenco-Du Nouy Tensiometer
Rame-Hart Contact Angle Goniometer
Adsorptive Bubble Fractionation Apparatus
Coulter Electronic Partical Counter, Model Z1
Laser Zee Meter (Electrophoretic Mobility)
Conductivity Meter
Krüss Bubble Pressure Tensiometer UV-VIS Spectrophotometers
Micromeritics Sedigraph 5000 ET
Burleigh Instructional Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Brookhaven Zeta PALS
Malvern Zeta Sizer
Malvern Nanosizer

Polymer Characterization Equipment

Instron Tensile and Compression Tester
Brice-Phoenix Light Scattering Photometer
Brookhaven Dynamic and Static Light Scattering Apparatus
Waters Gel Permeation Chromatography
Kinematic Viscosity Apparatus
Brookfield Cone and Plate Viscometer
Perkin-Elmer Differential Scanning Calorimeter
Perkin-Elmer Thermogravimetric Analyzer
Wescan Recording Membrane Osmometer

Plus complete sample preparation facilities with some limited synthesis apparatus.

For information about access to the CPS laboraties and equipment, please contact the Director of the CPS Labs, Prof. Annette Jacobson (jacobson [at] andrew.cmu.edu)

CFE Faculty Collaborations
A manifestation of the interdisciplinary nature of the Center is the existence of jointly advised students and industrially-funded projects. A partial list of these is provided.

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)

RESEARCH

Research