Soft matter covers a broad range of materials, including polymers (natural and artificial), gels, hydrogels, colloids, fluids (in bulk and confined), and glasses with with liquid crystals—as well as membranes, peptides, and bio-inspired materials. These materials have complex architectures, with their structural features and dynamic processes spanning diverse length scales and time scales, ranging from a single particle to a continuum, hydrodynamic limit, and either coherent displacements of particles, or diffuse, incoherent translations and rotations of the molecular entities.
Molecular motions in soft matter determine its intrinsic properties. The complexity of these dynamics becomes more severe when soft materials are subjected to environments with extreme temperatures, pressures, and confinements. Having a molecular-level understanding of the dynamics of soft matter is critical to characterizing their behavior in varied conditions.
Although countless techniques are individually available today to resolve the wide range of relaxation processes taking place in soft materials, it is often difficult to correlate and compare results obtained using different investigational methods. This is true even when they refer to the same material or similar dynamic phenomena, and many of those techniques do not provide the desired spatial scale information.
Neutron scattering spectroscopy is a technique that can probe both the time scales and length scales of dynamical processes in soft matter. Combining two or more neutron scattering techniques to capture the molecular motions taking place at complementary time scales is an emerging practice today within the soft matter community.
The workshop encompasses a unique opportunity to explore quasi-elastic neutron scattering and its applications. It brings together experts working on different aspects of material dynamics at the pico-to-mesoscale range, in a common effort to familiarize the workshop participants with the two techniques and explore future research directions and collaborations among the user community.
Workshop Organizers: Naresh C. Osti and Laura R. Stingaciu
Workshop Co-organizers and Advisors: Piotr A. Zolnierczuk, Eugene Mamontov, Niina H. Jalarvo, William T. Heller, and Anibal Ramirez Cuesta
