Interfacial structure and dynamics in nanoparticle-polymer composites

Nanoparticle-polymer hybrids and composites are central to a wide range of advanced multifunctional materials and technological applications. The premise of such systems lies in the myriad of possibilities that they offer in synergistically integrating particle and polymer properties to obtain significantly improved material performance. The past few decades of research on nanoparticle-based materials have remarkably enhanced our understanding of their macroscopic behavior and have resulted in an array of novel technologies. Yet, the demand for increasingly sophisticated applications of nanoparticle-polymer composites requires design rules that allow control of nanoscale interactions between the nanoparticles and their host environment. Such interactions manifest in unique interfacial structural and dynamical properties which ultimately determine the emergent material behavior. In this talk, I highlight the role of neutron scattering in directly observing and resolving interfacial properties that are critical to the design and performance of nanoparticle-polymer hybrids and composites.