Complex materials, produced by highly refined control of structures at multiple length-scales, comprise the very fabric of many modern technologies. Soft materials, mostly synthetic polymers, are lightweight and strong — these are found as structural materials in cars, homes or sports equipment, in packaging for food and beverages, but also used as membranes for desalination and other separations.
Most polymeric materials introduced into commerce today contain multiple components or phases, with supramolecular structures ranging from nanometers to microns. Organic materials and polymers are also increasingly useful as building blocks for electronic and photovoltaic applications, an area of major activity in this department. Colloidal assemblies are also an important class of materials that have been the focus of significant research efforts at Princeton.
Processing and fluid dynamics play an important role in the development of polymeric materials and complex fluids. For example, researchers at Princeton utilize fast mixing of polymer solutions with a poor solvent for the polymers to produce nanoparticles with controlled structure, size, and complex morphologies in a one-step scalable process. Fluid-mechanical instabilities are being used to generate intricate patterns in two and three dimensions.