Degradation of Man-Made Materials at the Molecular Level

Our research is focused on understanding the physics of various degradation processes at the single-molecule scale in various man-made systems and apply them for better materials and system design.

We often think about single molecules while describing processes like degradation of materials, yet, our experimental procedures to understand the same involve ensemble approaches. Single-molecule spectroscopy techniques that have been developed for biosciences are now being applied to the problems in chemistry and physics and show the remarkable heterogeneities that are not visible in the ensemble. However, there are still many problems in soft-mater and biological engineering, such as tablet disintegration and polymer photo-degradation that require closer investigation to understand the mechanistic dynamics taking place.

Man-made systems that are designed to degrade or disintegrate either naturally or induced are currently studied using conventional ensemble methods. These systems lack the understanding of material breakdown at the micro and nanoscale. Our lab uses novel SMS techniques to not just understand the various physical processes in natural- and induced-degradation in these material systems, but also to develop better methods for understanding the various the physical processes during the degradation of materials. We also utilize non-linear techniques used in single molecule spectroscopy to challenge the limits imposed by the classical domains in top-down fabrication.