Buddhapriya Chakrabarti

Does soft matter, matter? Predictive design of formulated products

Many products that we use daily are complex mixtures of soft materials. Food
such as chocolates, mayonnaise, ketchup, or hygiene products such as shampoo, shaving foam, gels, toothpaste etc., are examples of such products. Research in this area, however, has been limited to idealized systems involving one or two ingredients. An important question, therefore, is whether a study of soft materials is at all useful in improving the functionality of complex industrial formulations with numerous ingredients. In this talk, I will describe a predictive design pathway based on an interdisciplinary approach, to address this question. The first part of the talk will focus on a challenge faced in industrial formulations such as paints, chocolate production, and hygiene products where a low molecular weight component of a complex mixture migrates to the surface that is open to the atmosphere. Such a process leads to poor performance of the product. The underlying physical processes governing this behavior of migration involve phase separation and wetting. I will describe a multiscale approach to tackle this problem that leads to the design of formulated products with well-tailored properties. I will also discuss some fundamental questions that arise in this context and their connection to biological phenomena.