Polymer Chemistry

Polymer Chemistry (Polymer/Colloid Science and Engineering) research at Stony Brook is centered around the investigations of polymer structures, morphologies and dynamics from atomic, nanoscopic, microscopic to mesoscopic scales. The current research topics include fiber formation and deformation at nano- and micro-scales, high pressure study under supercritical conditions, mineralization under polymer nanostructured templates, organic/inorganic hybrid nanocomposites, phase transitions of polymers, polymer/DNA interactions, new polymer media for DNA electrophoresis, polymer crystallization, polymer melts and solutions during flow, supramolecular synthetic and biological molecules. Recently, several major research programs in collaboration with the faculty of Biomedical Engineering Department and of Medical School have also been launched to apply the bioabsorbable/biocompatible polymers for medical applications, drug delivery and tissue engineering.

Our laboratories are equipped with some best nanostructure characterization facilities in the world, including laser light scattering laboratory at Stony Brook and synchrotron X-ray scattering beamlines at the National Synchrotron Light Source in Brookhaven National Laboratory and at the Advanced Photon Sources in Argonne National Laboratory. The fundamental light scattering techniques involve photon correlation spectroscopy, transient electric birefringence, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, and holographic relaxation spectroscopy. Together with time resolved simultaneous small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) techniques and other methods such as Raman scattering, we have been studying many frontier polymer research problems as stated above.