Functional Soft Materials

          A large class of functional materials occurs in nature in the form of dispersions. Such dispersions are inherently multicomponent systems of various sizes of the individual components. Quite often the behaviors of certain given components become crucial in applications. A classic example of such dispersions is colloidal suspensions which consists of colloidal macromolecules of size ranging from nanometers to micrometers, solvent water, salt and so forth. The behavior of the solute colloidal macromolecules are of crucial importance for understanding the behavior of the dispersion which in turn govern their applications. However, the other components of the dispersion, namely the solvent and the ions, influence the behavior of the colloidal macromolecules. In particular, the distribution of these components around the macromolecule leaves footprint in the phase behavior and the dynamics of the macromolecules. Such examples are ample in nature. Polymeric dispersions contain polymer macromolecules, water and salt. The phase behavior of the polymeric macromolecules are immensely influenced by the distribution of the water molecules and salt ions around them. With the advent of bottom-up synthesis technique of novel nanosized materials, the understanding of the behavior of solvent in response to the introduction of solutes in a dispersion is getting all the more important. In this part of activity, we study the solvation dynamics of solvent around macromolecular solutes where the solvent is driven away from equilibrium either by external force or by shear. We are particularly interested in extracting the time scale of the relaxation of different hydrodynamic variables of the solvent in the different solvation shells while the external perturbation on the dispersion is on.

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