SFB 1552:  Defects and Defect Engineering in Soft Matter

• Subject Area: Chemistry ; Biology ; Physics
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465145163

"Defect engineering" is an established term and approach in hard-matter science, most prominently in the context of tailoring electronic, mechanical, and optical properties of inorganic semiconductors. In sharp contrast, the potential of defect control in soft matter, with ist inherently rich free energy landscape and structural diversity, has not yet been comprehensively explored. Whereas strategies to make and functionalize defect-free, well-defined polymeric and colloidal structures have attracted much attention in the past, attempts to classify, assess, and control defects in soft matter are scarce. The mission of the proposed collaborative research center (CRC) is to shift this paradigm. For this purpose, we first aim to understand the influence of defects on the structure, dynamics, and properties of polymeric, colloidal, and amphiphilic systems. Second, we want to develop comprehensive strategies to control the defect formation and thus gain control over the defect structure(s), concentration, and temporal evolution. Based on these insights, we aim to (1) establish a fundamental understanding of the interplay between defects and the adaptivity and resilience of dynamic soft matter systems and, (2) enable the development of functional units for devices, wherein defects will be the actual function givers e.g., by controlling the transport of matter or charges. For that purpose, we propose a classification of defects in terms of topological defects, connectivity defects, and doping defects. The impact of these types of defects in soft matter will be evaluated systematically in a joint effort of experiment and theory. Experimentally, the investigation of the different defect types requires not only comprehensive synthetic expertise, but also specialized analytical methods. We will cover a broad scope of soft matter manifestations, reaching from flexible polymers, to block copolymers and amphiphiles, but also colloids and biomolecules. We will consider classical soft matter properties, that is, macroscopic elasticity, viscoelasticity, and microscopic permeability and try to find fundamental physical principles to their dependency on the presence of different forms of defects. In addition, the impact of defects on specific properties such as the electro-optical activity of polymer- and colloid-based functional units will be considered. As further step, active supramolecular materials of synthetic and biological origin will be investigated with respect to the controllable induction and elimination of defects.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• A01 - Real-Time Nanoscale Investigation of Soft Matter Defects (Project Heads Budker, Ph.D., Dmitry ;  Ermakova, Anna )
• A02 - Tuning hybrid molecule/magnetic interfaces by defect engineering (Project Head Wittmann, Angela )
• A04 - Energy Transfer towards Engineered Organic Dyes that Prevent Charge Carrier Trapping (Project Head Blom, Paul )
• A05 - Visible Light driven Hydrogen Generation with Engineered Photocatalyst-Doped Micelles in Water (Project Head Kerzig, Christoph )
• A06 - Multicomponent Supramolecular Copolymerization for Controlled Defect Engineering (Project Head Dhiman, Ph.D., Shikha )
• B01 - Enhanced Mobility in Supramolecular Polymer Networks by Connectivity Defects (Project Heads Nikoubashman, Arash ;  Seiffert, Ph.D., Sebastian )
• B02 - Molecular Defect-Regulated 1D Supramolecular Polymer and Hydrogel Formation using Multidomain Peptides (Project Head Besenius, Pol )
• B03 - Homeostatic System Behaviour to Engineer Resilience against Defects (Project Heads Besenius, Pol ;  Walther, Andreas )
• B04 - Engineering water connectivity defects on nano-scale at proteins and protein interfaces (Project Heads Czodrowski, Paul ;  Stelzl, Lukas )
• C01 - Impact of Colloids as Defects on the Structure Formation of Membrane Forming Amphiphiles and Amphiphilic Block Copolymers (Project Heads Bleul, Regina ;  Maskos, Michael )
• C02 - Manipulating defects with defects in block copolymer based materials (Project Head Schmid, Friederike )
• C03 - Dynamic Defect Annealing within Enzymatic Reaction Networks to Design Autonomous Reconfigurable ATP-Fueled Non-Equilibrium Multicomponent Systems (Project Heads Gerber, Ph.D., Susanne ;  Walther, Andreas )
• C04 - Understanding and Controlling Defects and their Impact on Function, Structure and Activity in Lipid Membranes (Project Heads Schneider, Dirk ;  Wahl, Johannes M. )
• Q01 - Interdisciplinary sensing and spectroscopy (Project Heads Budker, Ph.D., Dmitry ;  Ulbricht, Ronald )
• Q02 - Optical Super-Resolution Imaging in Soft Matter Systems (Project Head Liu, Xiaomin )
• Q03 - Dynamical Information through X-Rays (Project Head Amann-Winkel, Ph.D., Katrin )
• Z01 - Administration and Coordination (Project Head Seiffert, Ph.D., Sebastian )
• Z02 - Integrated Research Training Group “Defects to Effects Engineering in Materials Sciences” (Project Heads Amann-Winkel, Ph.D., Katrin ;  Besenius, Pol )

• Applicant Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
• Participating Institution: Fraunhofer-Institut für Mikrotechnik und Mikrosysteme IMM; Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung
• Spokesperson: Professor Sebastian Seiffert, Ph.D.