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“Directed aging: using memory and nature’s greed for materials design”
Presented by Professor Sidney Nagel
Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Physics
The University of Chicago
It is a well-known and indisputable fact that materials age and deform over time which often leads to detrimental degradation. In contrast to this view, I will seek to embrace aging and develop it as a methodology to create desired and novel functionality in matter. The central idea is that a material retains a memory of the external stimuli to which it was exposed during its preparation history and, in reaction to those applied cues, can be directed to evolve desired behaviors not easily found otherwise. “Directed aging” thus has the potential to become a general and unconventional methodology for creating material function; it stands in direct juxtaposition to the normal paradigm where materials are designed for specific functions. Just as stem cells evolve differently depending on the environment to which they are exposed, we envisage materials that develop new types of response upon exposure to different cues. We are left with the question: How far can this vision be pushed to generate broad classes of materials with desired functionality?
Sidney Nagel is an American physicist and the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he is affiliated with the Department of Physics, the James Franck Institute, and the Enrico Fermi Institute. His research focuses on complex everyday physics such as “the anomalous flow of granular material, the long messy tendrils left by honey spooned from one dish to another, the pesky rings deposited by spilled coffee on a table after the liquid evaporates or the common splash of a drop of liquid onto a countertop”. His work includes high-speed photography of splashing liquids and drop formation. His academic career began as a Research Associate at Brown University in 1974, and from there he went in 1976 to the University of Chicago, becoming a full professor in 1984, and gaining his present position in 2001.