Computational Nanoengineering of Polymer Surface Systems Graduate Student Mentor: Abishek Venkatakrishnan Faculty Mentors: Dr. Kelly L. Anderson and Dr. Vikram Kuppa

Polymer Adsorption Polymer-surface interactions and polymer adsorption are of enormous importance: human life (protein function), industry (paints, adhesives) and energy (polymer solar cells) Surfaces encountered in real life are mostly rough, but almost all studies to date involve ideal (smooth) surfaces. The main aim of this project is to study the polymer adsorption on rough surfaces using molecular simulations.

ε ~ k B T ε > k B T Schematics

Research Tasks Molecular dynamics simulations will be performed using LAMMPS. Monte Carlo simulations will use a home-grown code written in C. Post-processing of data will be carried out using tools like VMD and scripts using C, Matlab and perl.

What students can expect to gain Students will gain an appreciation of polymer physics and molecular simulation techniques – Monte-Carlo (MC) and Molecular Dynamics (MD). Gain experience in communicating their findings both in oral and written formants. Ability to write simple and efficient codes in MATLAB/C. A good understanding of Linux operating system.