Self-organized Meso-Fabrication and Functionalities in Highly Confined Soft Materials

“This talk will summarize the underlying physics and some of the challenges in self-assembly and self-organization on micro/nano scales in soft materials based on understanding and control of instabilities in small scale systems. I will illustrate the basic principles from our recent results on novel meso-fabrication techniques and the resultant functionalities in soft polymer films and surfaces. These techniques and functionalities include: (1) A novel microfluidic reusable adhesive where the energy of adhesion is increased by two orders, (2) Elastic Contact Instability of a soft solid 
film, where a variety of structures such as arrays of femto-liter beakers, pillars and channels can be formed, aligned and modulated in-situ by controlled movements of a stamp, (3) Controlled Dewetting of thin (5 nm-100 nm) polymer films on patterned substrates where many morphologically distinct meso-structures can be tuned on the same substrate by changing the film preparation conditions, (4) Electric Field Modulation of Interfaces where a visco-elastic film can be patterned on a hierarchy of length scales 
by temporal modulation of the field, and (5) Miniaturization by Micro-molding combined with Controlled Shrinkage using which sub-micron carbon-MEMS structures could be fabricated using an RF based gel. The major emphasis in all these techniques is to produce functional structures and interfaces with applications that range from polymer based opto-electronics, MEMS, micro-batteries, sensors and micro-fluidics to the bulk-nano materials for optical and functional coatings, smart adhesives, super-wetting, 
catalytic adsorption and structural colors.”