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Research Interests

Current Research

Katsumata Group’s overarching research goal is to design extremely confined soft/hard interfaces. Examples in which such interfaces are prevalent include sequence-defined polymers, nanocomposites with ultra-small nanoparticles, ultra-thin polymer films/coatings, and 2D materials with critical dimensions smaller than 10 nm. Despite emerging capabilities to synthesize these materials with precision, the influence of extreme confinement is not fully understood. The thermophysical properties of molecules that are extremely confined is often governed by rules different from those of bulk and moderately confined systems (> 10 nm scale).

In particular, the Katsumata Group focuses on three phenomena: dynamics, mechanics, and wettability. As the nanoparticle diameter and the coating thickness approach the size of polymer segments, molecular-level understanding of polymer dynamics becomes critical. The dynamics are, in turn, related to wettability, as molecules minimize their surface energies by rearranging their configurations. Polymer dynamics is analogously relevant to mechanical properties, as for example, modulus is correlated with segmental relaxations, whereas failure is related to entire chain dynamics.

Keywords: Directed self-assembly, patterning on non-ideal surfaces, hierarchical metasurfaces, nanoconfinement, block copolymers, 2-D materials, fluorescent microscopy

Awards and Honors

2019 American Chemical Society, Petroleum Research Fund, Doctoral New Investigator Grant