Materials Seminar - Christopher Balzer

Predictive Thermodynamics of Supramolecular Networks and Sustainable Blends

Polymers imbued with reversible bonds exhibit unique and tunable thermodynamic and dynamic properties that are critical for applications ranging from adaptive biotechnologies to sustainable plastics. However, a predictive theoretical description of these systems has remained elusive due to the combinatorial complexity of counting infinite potential reaction products. In this talk, I will discuss an extensible theoretical framework that overcomes this central challenge, enabling the systematic study of how molecular architecture and network topology dictate polymer phase behavior. I will demonstrate how this framework uncovers novel network thermodynamics that deviate from classical theories and show how these insights have guided the experimental design of supramolecular compatibilizers in plastic recycling.Chris Balzer is a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Research Lab at UC Santa Barbara with Prof. Glenn Fredrickson. His work combines statistical mechanics and computational science to investigate the thermodynamics of soft materials, focusing on polymer self-assembly, charged assembly, and interfacial behavior of complex fluids. Chris received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Caltech as a DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellow. Chris also earned an M. Phil. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar and a B.S.E in Chemical Engineering from Arizona State University.