Professor George Phillies is supported by a grant from the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program to perform studies of structured fluids using optical probes. The objective of the work is to study diffusion and transport in liquids with extended local structures such as micelles, vesicles and microemulsions. The primary physical method is light scattering spectroscopy which can determine the diffusion coefficients of mesoscopic particles through amphiphile solutions. Computer simulations are used to examine the diffusion of small molecules through the pores of model glass formed from large immobile spheres. These simulations, which incorporate Monte Carlo dynamics, molecular dynamics, and Brownian dynamics computations, model how particle motions are constrained by random static potentials. %%% Probe motion in surfactant systems and porous media model aspects of a wide variety of important scientific and technical processes, including self-organization of complex structures, intracellular diffusion in living cells, three phase catalysis, and enzymatic post-processing of polymers in biochemical engineering.
