THE SCHOOL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree

DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY

on Tuesday June 5, 2018

2:00 PM

in MoSE 3201A

will be held the

DISSERTATION DEFENSE

for

James Iocozzia

“Hard and Soft Nanocomposites Enabled by Rationally Designed

Nonlinear Copolymers Derived from High Functionality Polyols”

Committee Members:

Prof. Zhiqun Lin, Advisor, MSE
Prof. Dong Qin, MSE

Prof. Paul Russo, MSE

Prof. Vladimir Tsukruk, MSE

Prof. John Zhang, CHEM

Abstract:

Complex, nonlinear polymer and copolymer architectures derived from beta-cyclodextrin and hyperbranched polyglycerols (HPG) offer an inexpensive and versatile route for templating hard, soft and mixed nanocomposites of different sizes, shapes and functionalities. However, several challenges must be addressed before such technologies can be scaled up and further developed on an industry scale. Controlling the molecular weight and reducing the polydispersity remain a challenge due to the nature of the polymerization as well as their size thus limiting batch-to-batch consistency and leading to property variation. The templating nature of such materials is also unexplored leading to little understanding of the templating scope of such materials as well as the effect of polymer architecture and post polymerization treatments on the resulting nanocomposites. The work in this dissertation addresses three distinct but related areas of nonlinear polymer-based templating. First, promesogen-capped beta-cyclodextrin-based templates are developed for templating iron oxide nanoparticles. The resulting nanocomposites showed improved dispersion in liquid crystal solution. Second, HPG-based star polymers are developed for templating inorganic nanoparticles including Au, Ag, and iron oxide. The relationship between nanoparticle quality and polymer template arm length/number is presented and optimized to ensure nanoscale retention as well as improved solubility and stability. Third, HPG-based star polymers are modified by various post polymerization crosslinking strategies (chemical and UV) to produce soft, wholly polymeric nanoparticles with high uniformity. The aim across all areas of investigation is to develop simple, generalizable, and robust polymer-based strategies for producing high functionality nanocomposites.