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<span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><img width="600" height="171" id="Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:image005.jpg@01D845D5.17B10F60" alt="Dissertation Defense Announcement at the Cullen College of Engineering" style="width:6.25in; height:1.7812in"></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; color:red; text-transform:uppercase">Structure Controlled Dynamics of Particles and Polymers in Aqueous Polyelectrolyte Solutions</span></b></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:13.5pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Ali Slim</span></b><span style="font-size:13.5pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"></span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">May 2, 2022; 12:30 – 2:00PM (CST)</span></p>
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<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br>
Location: MREB Building, Agrawal Conference Room #126 </span></p>
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<b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Committee Chair:</span></b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br>
Jacinta Conrad, Ph.D.</span></p>
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<b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Committee Members:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br>
Jeremy Palmer, Ph.D. <b>| </b>Alamgir Karim, Ph.D. <b>|</b> Devin L Shaffer, Ph.D.
<b>|</b> Haleh Ardebili, PhD.</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"></span></p>
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<b><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; color:#C8102E">Abstract</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; color:#C8102E"></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> Complex fluids of particles and polymers can be found a wide range of industrial applications including enhanced oil recovery, drug delivery, and consumer goods. Polyelectrolytes
are polymers with charged functional groups on their backbone. The charged groups allow polyelectrolytes to maintain high stability and good biocompatibility in aqueous solutions. The induced electrostatic repulsion, however, result in highly extended conformations
compared to their neutral counterparts. The size, strength, and recurrence of these charged groups between the monomers leads to conformations ranging from rigid rod to semiflexible chain. These unique electrostatically-induced structural properties likely
affect their relaxations as well as the transport of objects within their networks.</span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> We investigate the dynamics of particles and polyelectrolyte chains in semidilute aqueous polyelectrolyte solutions using a combination of optical microscopy and scattering techniques.
We tune the structural properties of our system by varying concentration, ionic strength, and molecular weight. We show that particle dynamics non-monotonically deviate from ideal predictions. These deviations become larger as particles approach length scales
relevant to chain size. Our findings propose the presence of confinement effects that are not observed in neutral systems, suggesting that the deviations in particle dynamics rise from the unique conformation of polyelectrolytes. Moreover, we demonstrate how
the segmental relaxations of polyelectrolyte chains experience two qualitatively different scaling behaviors. At small length scales, chains relax according to theory. Chain dynamics, however, deviate at larger length scales with slower than predicted relaxations.
The deviations start at the characteristic length scale chains, suggesting that the slower dynamics result from coupling to the chain structure, which introduces a free energy minimum that makes relaxations outside of it unfavorable. The physical pictures
presented in this work will help control the transport of particles in complex media and grant better understanding of structural properties of polyelectrolyte materials.</span></p>
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