Research headed by Antonia Statt, professor in Engineering, provides insight into the different variabilities of stress-responsive polymers and an opportunity for students to gain research experience. The research outcomes will be applied to and improve different fields of study, like health and medicine.
Statt worked on this research with Staci Strader, senior in Engineering, and Brandon Jeong, graduate student studying chemical engineering.
“There’s just such a wide design space for polymers and … the impacts of understanding the design space of polymers has such a wide capacity for changing a lot of material science or how we develop materials,” Jeong said.
Polymers are macromolecules composed of smaller units held together by covalent bonds. On a larger scale, polymer chains create materials used in everyday items like plastic. Jeong compared a material made of polymers to a wad of spaghetti with strands that interlace in complicated ways to create a whole.
The project specifically researches stress-responsive polymers, which differ from regular polymers due to the special chemical units they contain, according to Statt. Force on the stress-responsive polymer chain will break the covalent bonds and create a reaction with the material.
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“You can design them,” Statt said. “Chemists can synthesize them with various different properties; they can change color, sometimes they break apart entirely, release small molecules, do all kinds of interesting things.”
Returning to the spaghetti analogy, Statt explained the role the chemical units play in the larger context of a material.
“So out of your spaghetti, you take a tiny little segment — and those segments are special — and if you pull on the entire thing, those special segments respond to your force,” Statt said.
At the University, the lab focuses solely on the simulation and computational aspects of polymer research.
“In a simulation, we can very easily, for example, change certain things and figure out what is the best placement for our stress-responsive monomers or units in our polymer matrix to get a good activation,” Statt said.
The group can easily adapt and analyze minute changes to the chains without the cost and challenge that experimental research requires.
“We can zoom in, and we can look at every single polymer chain (and) nanometer level and see which exact monomer is activated,” Statt said. “So we can learn a lot fundamentally about how a force … is actually transmitted to the nanoscale and then travels through the polymer chains to the individual monomers that then get activated.”
According to Strader, the trio utilizes Python alongside computational software HOOMD-blue and OVITO to control and analyze simulations.
“The goal of the research we’re working on is trying to put it in a system that can create a higher activation so you can actually see the response,” Strader said.
The lab has also partnered with University of Pittsburgh associate professor Jennifer Laaser, who carries out the experimental portion of the research.
“Collaborations are really a key thing for simulation labs, and I think it’s really fun and really cool if multiple people can work on the same problem, and together, we are making more progress than we would individually,” Statt said.
In addition to researching the behaviors of different chemical effects on polymers, the lab provides students like Strader and Jeong with opportunities to expand their education and receive hands-on research experience.
Strader said that while many courses and professors are focused on other materials like metals, the lab allows her to apply her knowledge to polymers.
The lab also provides Strader with opportunities she would otherwise not have access to as an undergraduate student.
“I’ve learned a lot of things I would never learn in a classroom,” Strader said.
Strader also explained that through participation in research, she has discovered she wants to continue her education by attending graduate school.
Within each project of her lab, Statt pairs an undergraduate student with a graduate student as a way for undergraduate students to receive mentorship while pursuing research experience.
Based on research interests, Statt assigns pairs to different projects, such as stress-responsive polymers.
Statt advises any student interested in graduate school to participate in research to determine whether or not that is the correct path for them to pursue.
Any undergraduate students enrolled in the University and graduate students admitted to the Grainger College of Engineering interested in participating can email Statt at [email protected].
