MSE Seminar: Creating Photonic Materials from Soft Matter Building Blocks

McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium (MDEA)
Stacy Copp

Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Department of Physics
UC Irvine

Abstract: The inherent self-assembly properties of polymers can be harnessed to build soft photonic materials from the bottom up. The soft nature of these materials is extremely beneficial for applications but also poses significant challenges to characterizing their nanoscale structures. In this talk, I will describe two separate polymer-based photonic materials and how we are elucidating nanoscale structure from observed optical properties. First, I will discuss few-atom silver clusters stabilized by the biopolymer DNA. By combining high throughput experimental approaches with simple scattering theory, we have built a model structure for these fluorescent clusters, which was just verified by a recently reported crystal structure. Second, I will discuss pH-responsive micelles and lamellae of a low molecular weight poly(butadiene)-block-poly(acrylic acid). We use molecular fluorophores to probe structural changes in the polymer micelles as a function of pH and to characterize the dynamics of polymer lamellae. Interestingly, bilayers of this polymer display remarkable fluidity, with promise as biomimetic membranes.

Bio: Stacy Copp is an assistant professor and Samueli Faculty Development Chair at UC Irvine in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Physics. Her lab studies self-assembly of biopolymers and synthetic polymers and uses assembly processes in these soft matter systems to form novel optical materials. Because the complexity of interactions in soft materials often limits first-principles design approaches, her work incorporates machine learning and data mining for materials study and design. She received a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Arizona and a master's degree and doctorate in physics from UC Santa Barbara. She was a Hoffman Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she also held a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, a L’Oreal USA for Women in Science Fellowship and a LANL Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.