The field of colloidal suspensions consisting of sub-micron sized anisotropic particles, i.e., particles whose surface is asymmetrically functionalized or whose shape is non-spherical, has seen a rapid growth in recent years. These colloids are interesting both from fundamental point of view and from their potential in new applications to health care, energy, or consumer products industry.
This award will provide partial support towards travel to attend American Chemical Society (ACS) Symposium ?Anisotropic Colloids.? to be held at Indianapolis on September 8-12, 2013. The symposium is expected to attract scientists from diverse disciplines (Chemistry, Materials Science, Engineers, and Physicists) and will cover wide range of topics, from the synthesis to new physical phenomena, to new applications of anisotropic colloids.
From Sept. 9 to Sept. 12 2013, we held a symposium titled "Anisotropic Colloids: Synthesis, Fabrication, Modeling, Assembly, and Applications" at the 246th ACS National Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. The symposium was supported by both the National Science Foundation and the Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry (COLL) of the American Chemical Society. Anisotropic colloids are particles that possess one or multiple types of anisotropy in their geometric, interfacial, compositional, or physical properties. Unlike their isotropic counterparts, the interactions between anisotropic particles can be orientation-dependent, site-specific, and shape-selective. They are excellent models to probe both in- and out-of equilibrium behavior of complex fluids. Moreover, anisotropic particles have a broad range of applications including colloidal emulsifiers, photonic crystals, metamaterials, photovoltaics, and self-propelling motors. The symposium was organized to (1) provide a forum for communicating new findings and sharing insights in such an rapidly evolving field; and (2) introduce this emerging topic to interested graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and industrial researchers who might not work directly in this field. The symposium was composed of six half-day sessions, which included one educational workshop, fourteen invited talks given by internationally renowned experts, and twenty one talks presented by other researchers working actively in this field. The symposium was well-received and overall attendance was ~ 200. The attendees had diverse backgrounds in chemistry, physics, chemical engineering, and materials science. They also represent a balanced mixture of both experimentalists and theoreticians. An overview of the symposium schedule is shown in Fig. 1. During the symposium, a wide range of important topics were discussed. They included the synthesis and fabrication of patchy particles and anisotropic nano-particles, characterization methods, self- and directed assembly, theoretical and computational modeling, anisotropic particles at interfaces, and emerging applications of anisotropic particles (e.g., micro-motors, photonic crystals, plasmonic nanostructures). During the symposium, active exchange of opinions and discussion of existing scientific challenges occurred. The financial aid from both NSF and ACS also allowed partial support of both invited speakers and excellent student/postdoctoral researchers to attend this symposium. Based on the quality of the oral presentation, we selected two best presentation awardees from a large pool of participating graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Overall, this symposium on anisotropic colloids targeted a new and exciting frontier in fundamental science, provided many opportunities for ideas and discussions between researchers from both academia and industry, and trained a young generation of scientists. All those outcomes align very well with the mission of National Science Foundation.
