Sharon C. Glotzer - Assembly Engineering for Matter-On-Demand

2023 Welch Conference: "Living in a Material World"

Sharon C. Glotzer is the John W. Cahn Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also holds faculty appointments in Physics, Applied Physics, and Macromolecular Science and Engineering. Since July 2017 she is the Anthony C. Lembke Department Chair of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan. Her research on computational assembly science and engineering aims toward predictive materials design of colloidal and soft matter. Using computation, geometrical concepts, and statistical mechanics, her research group seeks to understand complex behavior emerging from simple rules and forces, and to use that knowledge to design new materials. Glotzer’s group also develops and disseminates powerful open-source software including the particle simulation toolkit, HOOMDblue, which allows for fast molecular simulation of materials on graphics processors, the signac framework for data and workflow management, and freud for analysis and visualization. She has authored over 320 publications and has presented over 400 invited talks. Glotzer received her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from UCLA, and her PhD in Physics from Boston University. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Glotzer is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics from the American Physical Society, the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum and the Alpha Chi Sigma Awards both from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Materials Science and MRS Medal from the Materials Research Society. She is a two-time recipient of the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the DoD and was a Simons Foundation Investigator from 2012-2022.

Abstract: Assembly Engineering for Matter-On-Demand

From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, the materials available to humankind have defined the world we live in. Tomorrow, our world will be shaped not by the discovery of a single material that enables a host of new technologies, but by the design and integration of a host of material building blocks dictated by the conception of new technologies. In the coming Age, matter will be realized on demand – what, where and when we need it -- by engineering the assembly of multifunctional collections of building blocks into materials with precision, programmability and personalization. One important route to matter-on-demand is through nanoparticles designed and synthesized as multi-material "atoms" with the valency needed to assemble into complex target structures. Unlike electronic valency governing the assembly of atoms through chemical bonding, nanoparticle valency arises from particle shape and physical interparticle interactions. Remarkably, even in the absence of explicit interactions, and due solely to entropy, particle shape alone can create the valency needed for particles to assemble into crystal structures of extraordinary complexity. What sort of “bonding” describes these interactions, which emerge as the particles become crowded, and how do we exploit it for matter-on-demand? We discuss these questions and present a new theory of entropic bonding that has important analogies with chemical bonding theory. With entropic bonding theory, we can predict colloidal crystal structures from nanoparticle shape in the same way that chemical bonding theory predicts atomic crystal structures from electronic valence.

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