2021 Young Scientist Research Award Lecture

2021 Young Scientist Research Award Lecture presented by Dr. Anne-Laure Fameau. The presentation will be livestreamed at https://annualmeeting.aocs.org/watch-the-livestream


How to use Self- and Direct assembly to design Smart Materials based on Fatty Acids?

All of the physical matter around us is composed of atomic or molecular building blocks. Controlling the assembly of these building block units holds the key for producing materials with new properties. Our research is focused on the self- and directed assembly of matter at all length scales, i.e. from molecular to macroscopic scale. We are interested in multiscale approaches to understand the interactions, which govern the assembly of colloids both in bulk and at interfaces. We develop new strategies to control the interactions and design responsive materials. These systems could find applications in a wide range of industrial and environmental processes such as in food, cosmetics, crude oil treatment and extraction.

Soft materials, such as foams, which respond to external stimuli, are on the leading edge of materials research. The macroscopic responsivity relies on the ability to react at microscopic or mesoscopic scales. A change in the molecular structure of the surfactant activated by stimuli can affect the self-assembled structure in water and the interfacial activity, which can in turn tune the foam stability between ultrahigh stability and immediate destabilization. We will illustrate how we can use fatty acids to produce multi-stimuli responsive foams.

Other technologically important materials are made by assembling colloidal particles into structures. A variety of techniques are available to assemble particles into chains, but so far it has proven challenging to make permanent chains that are flexible. We will present a new method for making highly flexible particle chains based on capillary attractions between particles coated with liquid fatty acids, which is broadly similar to the way sandcastles are bound by small volumes of liquid. We will illustrate how the lipid capillary bridges between particles can be used to provide new opportunities for assembling particles in the form of filaments, networks and self-repairing gels.