Hierarchically Structured Soft Polymer Composites: Multifunctional Materials for Many Applications

Devices must often function under unusually harsh environmental conditions including: a broad range of operational temperatures; a long service lifetime; extreme radiation, electrical, and chemical environments; and severe mechanical stress. These stringent requirements, coupled with current drives to reduce size, weight, power, and cost, while providing improved capabilities, necessitates novel and multifunctional materials solutions. This talk will present initial research illustrating how multifunctional polymer composites and nanocomposites with controlled hierarchical structures, spanning length scales from molecular chemistry (nm) to macroscopic composites (mm), can enable a broad range of emerging technologies. The topics include 1) soft polymer gels with enhanced toughness and broad temperature performance; 2) extrusion processable conductive polymer composites for manufacturing hierarchical phase separated structures; 3) porous polymers with controlled transport properties; and 4) radiation tolerant organic films through the incorporation of small molecule electron traps. The research is currently focused on the structure-property relationships, rather than specific applications. However, the relevance of these materials for applications in soft robotics, smart clothing, armor technology, homeland security, and battlefield medicine will be discussed.