Professor Edward J. Kramer, IRG 3 Leader

Phone: 805-893 4999, Fax: 805-893 8486

E-mail: edkramer@mrl.ucsb.edu

Fracture of Polymers: Diffusion of Block Copolymers; Polymer Interfaces and Surfaces; Polymer Blends; Self-Assembly; Phase Behavior in Thin Films.

Professor Kramer received a B.Ch.E. Degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University in 1962 and a Ph.D. in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1966. He was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford with Sir Peter Hirsch, FRS, before joining the faculty of Cornell University in 1967 where he was appointed the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in 1988. In 1997 he joined the faculty of UCSB where he holds a joint appointment in Materials and Chemical Engineering. Professor Kramer's current research activities focus on polymer interfaces using a variety of depth profiling and microscopic imaging methods. His group is interested in the fracture of polymer interfaces and adhesion, from a micromechanical and molecular viewpoint. His work on grafting reactions at polymer/polymer interfaces seeks to understand the role of chain length and chemical functionality in the grafting kinetics and on the instabilities that develop as grafting proceeds. The control of morphology in phase separated thin films by controlling interface interactions is another important theme as is the diffusion of block copolymers where the ordered microstructure gives rise to thermodynamic barriers to diffusion of individual chains.

Appointments, Honors, and Awards

• Professor, Departments of Materials and Chemical Engineering
• Editor-in-Chief, Materials Science and Technology (18 Vol, VCH)
• Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Materials: Science and Technology
• Member, NRC Committee on Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (1996- )
• Fellow, American Physical Society (1983)
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (1994)
• High Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society (1985)
• U.S. Senior Scientist Award of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (1987)
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1988)
• Swinburne Award of the Institute of Materials (UK) (1996)
• Docteur honoris causa, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (1995)

Some specific research projects and references

• J. Heier, E.J. Kramer, S. Walheim and G. Krausch, "Thin Diblock Copolymer Films on Chemically Heterogeneous Surfaces", Macromolecules, 30, 6010 (1997)
• C.-A. Dai, C.O. Osuji, K.D. Jandt, B.J. Dair, C.K. Ober, E.J. Kramer, C.-Y. Hui, "The Effect of Monomer Ratio on the Strengthening of Polymer Phase Boundaries by Random Copolymers", Macromolecules, 30, 6727 (1997)
• J. Genzer and E.J. Kramer, "Wetting of Substrates with Phase-Separated Binary Polymer Mixtures", Phys. Rev. Letters, 78, 4946 (1997)