(CHEM)

I/UCRC's were setup by the US National Science Foundation as a bridge between academics and industry as a formal structure for shared precommercial interests. The Center serves as a forum to address industry wide issues. The centers have devleoped into sites where industry can easily access a trusted team of world class experts, help in the growth of trained professionals who can better contribute to applied fields in their specific areas of interest, act as a forum for industry/industry discussions. The centers provide workshops, training, consulting, and long-term relationships approved by industry and university administrations that can rapidly address industry research and devleopment needs.

The Center for Emergent Hierarchical Materials (CHEM) grew out of the realization that many industries in a variety of markets face similar problems in addressing complex multi-hierarchical materials. For example, in the formulation of inkjet ink an organic pigment is chosen for a particular spectroscopic signature. However, depending on processing and specific additives the brilliance, transparency, reflectance can vary across a wide range of perception. A brilliant color is the result of seemingly indecipherable set of serendipitously arrived at conditions that can sometimes be reproduced in a successful product. When things go wrong in manufacturing of such a product it is often useful to have some basic understanding that could provide tools to control the targeted properties, shelf-life, necessary application conditions, and proper thermal history and the like. A material like ink-jet ink is produced from milled crystalline nano-particles. The final optical properties are related to a micron-scale network that forms on application. Between milling the crystalline particles and emergence of the assembled film the nanoparticles cluster into primary particles mitigated by a surfactant, grow into looselly connected aggregates and form a network of aggregates. Similar multi-hierarchical assembly occurs in the manufacture of tires, in the shampoo and body wash formulations, in the manufacture of polymer nanocomposites for battery components, in the use of conductive inks, in paints and many other fields.

CHEM is broken into five thrusts, within each thrust different commercial markets are represented so that the thrust can give rise to unforseen synergy. Modeling software developed for polymer flow might find use in modeling micellar structures in a coacervate. Scattering tools developed for polylmers might be usefully applied to conductive inks. One goal of CHEM is to leverage existing advances in multi-hierarchical emergence in different fields as well as raise the knowledge base in a generic manner conducive to new understanding and market advantages. When center work approaches concepts with specific market value the Center will facilitate separate contracts and agreements with center members and industrial partners that can protect potential intellectual property. The main role of the Center is precommercial research and facilitating separate protection of new ideas of commercial value. The Center acts as a catalyst to new ideas, products and market share.