Events Calendar

In the last decade stimuli-responsive polymers attracted enormous attention for a range of important applications. Such polymers are capable of changing their conformation, solubility, or they can even break or form covalent bonds upon a change of temperature or pH value, upon light irradiation, by using electrochemical stimuli or by the presence of an electrical or magnetic field, or by combinations thereof. The presentation will focus on ..

Look at the materials surrounding you right now and tell us how well you know what is inside. You might be surprised, but almost all materials around us are composite materials. Even concrete of FIT building walls is composite – actually, one of the oldest known to humankind – consisting of sand, gravel and cement. Today we add steel to the mix, which puts the brittle concrete under compression, allowing for large free hanging ceilings. In general, the underlining idea of composites is obvious: take elements with different properties...

I will review recent progress on the development and application of advanced atomistic algorithms to simulate chemomechanical systems where local chemistry and long-range stress are tightly coupled, e.g. at the tip of a propagating crack or the core of a dislocation. I will discuss two general approaches...

Emerging technologies often promise to solve major current problems, e.g. regarding functionality, sustainability, societal fairness, yet they might also bear potential risks that are hardly foreseeable. Classical technology acceptance often relied on an expert approach. Yet, inclusive, participatory approaches increase acceptance and potential use of novel technologies. Here, I will give an overview of state-of-the art...

We study how peptides can be used to create functional materials and adaptive systems using bottom-up approaches. We use integrated computational and experimental approaches to search and map the peptide sequence space and create guiding principles for the formation of gels, soluble nanofilaments, liquid condensates and complex, sequence-adaptive liquids. The talk will provide updates on three ongoing research directions: