Entry Date:
June 7, 2016

Ortony Lab at MIT

Project Website http://ortony.mit.edu/


The Ortony investigates dynamics of soft matter for biomaterials and energy. The group is broadly interested in the area of applied soft matter.

Soft materials are defined by their molecular (carbon-based) chemical structure and their mesophasic character, spanning the range between liquid and solid-like properties.

The group exploits molecular self-assembly to create nanoscale structures with targeted geometries. Using this synthesis strategy, we create materials with an astonishing degree of internal organization on extremely small (sub-nanometer) length scales. We employ a variety of highly specialized methods, from unique magnetic resonance techniques to high flux neutron and x-ray techniques. These methods allow us to probe internal structure, dynamics, and water motion with site specificity.

(1) Soft energy materials -- Creating sustainable and renewable energy technologies is critical for tackling climate change and the cascade of problems that it has caused. We create and investigate new energy technologies in which soft materials are an integral component. Systems of interest to our group include bulk heterojunction solar cells and LEDs, artificial photosynthesis systems, and others.

(2) Interfacing materials with the body -- The scope of biomaterials research at its inception was limited to hard medical implant materials. This definition has evolved to include soft implantable materials, soft interfaces for tissue, and more recently bioactive materials that are capable of participating in specific molecular interactions.

We strive to create soft matter that binds, folds, and recognizes biological signals including cell receptors, proteins, enzymes, and membranes. Research projects in this area have broad applications, for example in tissue engineering for burns and traumatic injuries and in neural implant interfaces for prostheses.

(3) Dynamics in soft matter -- Molecular dynamics (MD) is a tremendously important area of computational chemistry and has revolutionized our understanding of biological events. In our group, we develop and implement experimental techniques based on magnetic resonance, neutron, and x-ray methods that are comparable to MD simulations. With these techniques we directly measure conformational dynamics in soft matter.