Steve Granick (U. of Illinois) : Some Surprises & Open Questions in Soft Materials

Steve Granick
University of Illinois, USA and IBS Center for Soft & Living Matter, Korea

A fundamental materials challenge is to form structure that is not frozen in place but instead reconfigures internally driven by energy throughput and adapts to its environment robustly. Predicated on fluorescence imaging at the single-particle level, this talk describes quantitative studies of how this can happen. With Janus colloidal clusters, we show the powerful role of synchronized motion in self-assembly. The conclusions extend unexpectedly to polymers and vesicles. A picture emerges in which simple experiments, performed at single-particle and single-molecule resolution, can dissect macroscopic phenomena in ways that surprise.