Description:

Professor Kurt Kremer
Director of Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung, Mainz
Wednesday, February 17th, 2016
4:00pm Ford ITW

“Co(non)solvency or the puzzle of polymer properties in mixed good or poor solvents”

The relation between atomistic structure, architecture, molecular weight and material properties is of basic concern of modern soft matter science. Here computer simulations on different levels of resolution play an increasingly important role. To progress further adaptive schemes are being developed, which allow for a free exchange of particles (atoms, molecules) between the different levels of resolution. The extension to open systems MD (grand canonical MD) as well as recent Hamiltonian based molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo adaptive resolution methods will be explained. Typical examples include the solvation of polymers in mixed solvents, especially PNIPAM in water alcohol mixtures, which reveals an interesting coil-globule-coil transition. This conformational transition cannot be explained within the classical Flory-Huggins picture, which is the standard mean field theory for polymer solutions and mixtures. The results point towards a general design of 'smart stimuli responsive polymers'. This work has been performed in collaboration with D. Mukherji and C. Marques.

Prof. Kremer joined the Max-Planck Society in September of 1995 as the sixth director of the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, heading the new theory group. In 1983 he received his PhD degree in theoretical physics from the University of Cologne. He performed computer simulations for dynamic and static properties of polymers in bulk and near surfaces. After spending another year at Jülich as a scientific staff member he moved for a postdoctoral stay to Exxon Research and Engineering Corporation, Annandale, New Jersey, USA. There, he started working on molecular dynamics simulations of polymers and on charge stabilized colloids in collaboration with Drs. Grest, Pincus, and others. In 1985 he came back to Germany becoming a member of Prof. Binder's group at the University of Mainz as an Assistant Professor of theoretical physics. There he got his Habilitation in 1988.After that he returned to the solid state laboratory of the KFA Jülich as a senior scientific staff member joining the group of Prof. Villain. In 1992 his Habilitation was transferred to the University of Bonn and in fall of 1995 back to Mainz.