Dr. Zachary Sherman, PhD

“Designer” soft materials, composed of colloids, nanoparticles, polymers, and proteins, possess physical properties tailored for a specific application and are widely used in energy, electronic, photonic, pharmaceutical, and many other technologies important for society. The procedure for systematically engineering the building-blocks to construct such materials with targeted properties involves numerical “inverse design” methods. Current inverse methods are limited to formulating materials with a single, equilibrium property. This is unacceptable for most technological applications, which demand multifunctional materials whose dynamic properties are controlled over a wide range of conditions, preventing inverse strategies from being reliably utilized in practice. My proposed research addresses these fundamental limitations of inverse solutions by developing (1) inverse methods for designing multiple functionalities and (2) inverse methods to control the dynamics of assembling materials. These new inverse engineering strategies will allow for systematic design of the structure, dynamics, and material properties of functional materials.