Institut Charles Sadron PECMAT

Hybrid Matter is one of the classic pillars of materials science and it is still gaining importance as modern nano-composites enable the development of new classes of materials, some of the bigger challenges in this field for the next decade being smart materials, anisotropic materials, multimaterials and multiproperty materials. The PECMAT group focuses on the investigation of multi-composite materials possessing nanoscale organization, which includes i) the preparation of nanoscale building blocks, ii) the organization of these building blocks into (multi)functional (multi)composites, iii) the multiscale analysis of the structure and the dynamics of such systems, iv) the optimization of the materials properties and also v) the improvement of the technology readiness levels once commercially interesting materials properties are found. While a large part of the activities of the PECMAT group is centered around polyelectrolytes as building blocks, other important building blocks are functional polymers, (block)copolymers, proteins and nanoscale objects (metallic, semiconducting or polymeric nanoparticles, - rods, -wires, and -fibers, carbon nanotubes, nanoclays and -platelets as well as graphene and its derivatives). The group works on films at interfaces, often prepared using Layer-by-Layer assembly and also on bulk systems, the materials properties that we are interested in are listed below as keywords.
Keywords : Mechanical properties, electrical properties, catalytic properties and their modeling, photocatalysis, transport phenomena, cell-surface interactions, tissue engineering, biocompatibility, stealthiness, antimicrobial properties, stimuliresponsiveness, biosensing, mechano-responsive properties, anisotropic properties, chiral materials, plasmonics, multiscale structural characterization.