Anomalous Transport in Porous Environments due to Energy Barriers, Self-Propulsion and Dynamic Confinement

Description:
The dynamic behavior of molecules and nanoparticles in confined environments, such as at interfaces and within porous materials, lead to complex and highly-varied phenomena, where heterogeneity may arise from spatial variation of the material/interface itself, from structural configurations, or through inhomogeneous dynamic behavior. To obtain relevant information about these complex dynamics, we have developed highly multiplexed single-molecule/single-particle tracking methods that acquire large numbers of trajectories in a given experiment, enabling robust statistical analysis of anomalous motion. Recent work in our lab has explored the 3D motion of both Brownian and self-propelled nanoparticles within highly interconnected porous environments (both static and dynamic), leading to insights linking microscopic pore-scale mechanisms to macroscopic transport. Examples to be discussed include the barrier-limited diffusive escape of nanoparticles from porous cavities, the enhanced motion of self-propelled catalytic Janus particles within 3D porous materials and the facilitated Brownian diffusion of nanoparticles within dynamically fluctuating porous environments.

Speaker: Daniel Schwartz - University of Colorado Boulder
Dan Schwartz is the Glenn L. Murphy Professor of Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has been a professor at CU-Boulder since 2001 and was department Chair from 2012-16. He was previously a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Tulane University from 1994-2000. Dan received his Bachelor's Degree (in Chemistry and Physics) and his PhD (in Physics) from Harvard, and subsequently performed postdoctoral fellowships in Chemical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara and Physical Chemistry at UCLA.

Dan's research interests include the dynamic behavior of molecules and nanoparticles in confined environments, including interfaces and porous media, with specialties in single-molecule microscopy, surface modification, biotechnology, biomaterials, liquid crystals, and heterogeneous (bio)catalysis. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society.