Soft Nanotechnologies & Applications Committee

Committee Chairs

Committee Members

Annual Symposium Synopsys

Many soft or fluid consumer products, such as foods, paint, lubricants, detergents, personal care products, and cosmetics, contain nanometer to micron scale structures. Nanostructured fluids are also key in industrial processes such as enhanced oil-recovery and emulsion polymerization. These structures (such as micelles, vesicles, emulsions and lamella) are formed by the spontaneous self-assembly of natural or synthetic surfactants, block copolymers, or colloids. In many cases complex mixtures of different materials are required to create the desired structure and performance. These complex materials are difficult to design, and challenging to characterize; but scientists in these industries, and in the academic groups focusing on this area, have developed considerable expertise.

Members of the broadly defined nanotechnology community are also increasingly interested in self-assembly and nanostructured fluids, which have the potential to provide robust and inexpensive strategies for creating nanoscale materials. For example, IBM recently highlighted the potential for block-copolymer self-assembly to create nanometer size structures for electronics applications.

The Nanotech conferences have a tradition of bringing together disparate groups to discover their common interests and shared challenges in fabricating, characterizing, and utilizing materials with nanometer to micron scale structure. This symposium will continue the tradition by bringing a wide range of people from industry, academia, and the broader nanotechnology community, with interests in self-assembly, nanometer to micron scale structured fluids and soft materials.

The Soft Nanotech Symposium will be coordinated with the Symposium on Polymer Nanotechnology. It will include sessions focused on applications in personal care, cosmetics and food science; and the following joint activities with other Nanotech2006 symposia:

• Characterization of soft nano materials (joint session with the Characterization Symposium)
• Design of soft structures for drug delivery: Liposomes, vesicles and emulsion systems (joint session with the Drug Delivery and Theraputics Symposium)
• Nanoparticles in soft materials - colloidal systems (joint session with the Nano Particles Symposium)
• Microfluidics to create soft nano and micro structured materials (joint session with the Micro and Nano Fluidics Symposium)
• Computer modeling and simulation of soft nanostructured materials (joint session with the Computational and Modeling Symposium)

Impacted Industries

Submit Proposal or Comment to Committee Chair

We encourage you to participate and to submit your interest as either an Scientific Committee Member or to organize a Scientific Committee*. The NSTI will provide the infrastructure for each Industrial Committee to organize and present a focused Symposium at the annual Nanotech Conference and Trade Show (Nanotech 2008, Boston, Massachusetts, June 1-5, 2008). Details will be provide upon approval of proposal.

* All submissions will be reviewed by the NSTI Scientific Committee Chairs and a timely response will be issued.

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