UConn Physics Colloquium

Most of us are familiar with glass-forming materials (the most common example being fused silica, which we call glass) and aware that polymers can be rigid (below their glass transition temperature) or rubbery (above their glass transition temperature). Polymer phase transitions have to do with collective motion of many entangled linear macromolecules. What happens when we make a polymer that is a sheet of molecules (a self-assembled monolayer)
instead of a linear collection? Does this system also have phase transitions? My group is interested in 1) investigating possible phase transitions within a single layer of molecules, 2) understanding how these phases (and their associated molecular motion) could be manipulated for technological purposes  (such as controlling flow through a membrane by changing the phase of a membrane coating) and 3) how they relate to similar interactions that occur  within the bilayer of amphiphilic molecules that form eukaryotic cell membranes.