Industry Center

Glenn Fredrickson

Professor and Director, MC-CAM

Contacts

Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials, 3105 MRL Bldg.
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5080

tel: 805-893 8308
fax: 805-893 4731
ghf@mc-cam.ucsb.edu

Personal web site

Morphologies of ABC Block Copolymers

Research Description

Professor Fredrickson is generally interested in applications of statistical mechanics to condensed phase systems. He has worked on cooperative relaxation phenomena in supercooled liquids and theories of the glass transition. He has also contributed to the theory of electronic excitation transport for probing macromolecular structure and dynamics, and to the theory of heat, mass, and momentum transport in heterogeneous media. In recent years, his group has been concerned with a variety of topics in polymer physics and macromolecular science and engineering. These include theoretical studies of: * Branched polymer thermodynamics, including polyolefin phase behavior * Microphase separation in block, graft, and random copolymers, and their blends * Interfacial and surface thermodynamics of alloys containing random and block copolymers * Pattern formation and nonequilibrium phase transitions in polymer solutions and melts under flow * Diffusion-controlled reactions in complex fluid media * Reactive blending processes * Solution templating processes * Fracture and practical toughness of block copolymer materials * Field-theoretic computer simulation methods for the study of polymers and complex fluids Besides these primarily theoretical investigations, Professor Fredrickson's group has strong interactions with the experimental groups of Professors Kramer, Leal, and Hawker at UCSB, as well as with leading experimental and theoretical groups in polymers and complex fluids throughout the world.

Biography

Professor Fredrickson joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in 1984 and was named Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs in 1989. In 1990, he joined UCSB where he is now Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials and holds the Mitsubishi Chemical Chair in Functional Materials. Professor Fredrickson served as Chairman of Chemical Engineering from 1998-2001 and became the founding Director of MC-CAM in 2001. Professor Fredrickson's research activities involve the theoretical analysis of complex fluid and polymer systems including block copolymers, alloys, emulsions, and polyelectrolyte complexes. Recently, his group has pioneered the development of new computer simulation tools for analyzing statistical field theory models of polymers and complex fluids -- "field theoretic simulations" -- and is applying these tools to the design of improved complex fluid formulations and high performance plastic materials.

Awards/Honors

• Cooperative Research Award in Polymer Science and Engineering, PMSE Division, American Chemical Society, 2008
• Polymer Physics Prize, American Physical Society, 2007
• Election to National Academy of Engineering, 2003
• Alpha Chi Sigma Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1999
• Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1998
• Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 1992
• John H. Dillon Medal of the American Physical Society, 1992
• Camille & Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, 1991
• NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, 1990
• Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, AT&T Bell Labs, 1989

Selected Publications

• Hybrid Particle-Field Simulations of Polymer Nanocomposites, Physical Review Letters, 96, 2006, 250601
• Semi-crystalline Thermoplastic Elastomeric Polyolefins: Advances Through Catalyst Development and Macromolecular Design, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 103, 2006, 15327, A. Hotta, E. W. Cochran, J. Ruokolainen, V. Khanna, G. H. Fredrickson, E. J. Kramer, Y.-W. Shin, F. Shimizu, A. E. Cherian, P. D. Hustad, J. M. Rose, and G. W. Coates
• Chiral Mesostructures by Nanoconfinement, Nature Materials, 3, 2004, 816, Y. Wu, G. Cheng, K. Katsov, S. W. Sides, J. Wang, J. Tang, G. H. Fredrickson, M. Moskovits, and G. D. Stucky
• Field-Theoretic Computer Simulation Methods for Polymers and Complex Fluids, Macromolecules, 35, 2002, 16, G. H. Fredrickson, V. Ganesan, and F. Drolet
• Block Copolymers -- Designer Soft Materials, Physics Today, 52(2), 1999, 32, F. S. Bates and G. H. Fredrickson