Building an Illinois Center for Next-Generation Adaptive Materials

Charles Schroeder, Nancy Sottos: Material Science and Engineering

Jeffrey Moore: Chemistry

Addressing the Problem

Society is facing formidable challenges associated with increasing worldwide energy demands. Staggering amounts of energy are required for separating chemicals, powering digital information technologies, and for manufacturing synthetic materials. Driven by these pressing concerns, our team aims to develop next-generation materials with controlled and efficient mass and energy transport properties. This project is a collaborative partnership between a team of leading experts and partners across the college to understand how to control mass, heat, and charge transport in adaptive materials, defined as materials that dynamically change form and function in response to environmental stimuli or triggers such as heat or light. We aim to exploit controlled transport in adaptive materials to unlock new technological advances in emerging areas such as reconfigurable electronics, mixed ion/electron conductors, and self-patterned synthetic materials for selective mass transport. The goals of this activity include: (1) understanding how adaptive materials can be used to control the transport of mass and ions for selective and efficient chemical separations, (2) developing new adaptive materials for reconfigurable electronics and coupled ion/electron transport in mixed conductors, and (3) pioneering new manufacturing methods to fabricate structured materials based on programmed reaction-diffusion processes. The scientific legacies will include a new foundational understanding of controlled transport in next-generation materials. The educational legacies will include fundamental change in how we approach center-level research, education, and workforce development.

Research Goals

Our work focuses on adaptive materials systems that can undergo cooperative transitions in structure or morphology, thereby providing new routes to access dynamic form and function and opening intrinsically new opportunities for controlling transport. The vision is to develop a scientific understanding of mass, heat, and charge transport in adaptive materials with broad technological applications. In Research Area 1, we will develop new and efficient methods for selective mass and ion separations using adaptive materials, with a particular focus in using reversibly assembled materials for mixed ion/electron transport. In Research Area 2, we will develop new adaptive electron and ion transporting materials that readily undergo structural transitions to precisely defined morphologies, thereby enabling dynamic organic electronics. In Research Area 3, we will understand how to design and build self-patterned synthetic materials using programmed reaction-diffusion processes, inspired by principles governing developmental biology. Broadly speaking, the translation of complex biological principles to adaptive materials in all three Research Areas requires a collaborative, center-level approach that unites researchers in a transdisciplinary and synergistic manner.