Prof. K. Saalwächter: "Structures and diffusion in amphiphilic model conetwork gels"

Organisch-chemisches Kolloquium

The Institute of Organic Chemistry invites to the lecture of

Prof. Dr. Kay Saalwächter, Universität Halle

who will be talking about

"Structures and diffusion in amphiphilic model conetwork gels"

Abstract:

Amphiphilic conetworks have niche applications as swollen, functional gels, e.g. as soft contact lenses. Their biomedical uses rely on a control of their mechanical properties and on selective transport through the hydrophilic and hydrophobic sub-phases. My presentation discusses a multidisciplinary effort to synthesize such gels as model systems with unprecedented control of their microstructure, enabling us to establish structure-function relationships. We use (and I explain in the talk) modern tools of NMR spectroscopy to characterize the network topology and study diffusion through the gels, SAXS to characterize the mesh structure as well as the microphase separation in selective solvents, and compare our results with course-grained computer simulations.