School of Polymer Science and Engineering
Research Areas
Page Content
The School of Polymer Science and Engineering faculty are engaged in world leading and innovative research spanning multiple areas in the field of polymer science and engineering.
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Functional Polymeric Materials |
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Functional polymeric materials with novel and controlled electronic, optical, and mechanical properties can enable numerous applications, including lighting, sensors, structural materials, packaging, and soft wearable electronics. Research in this area includes stimuli-responsive materials, devices, and processing techniques to obtain materials with controlled chain dynamics, morphology function and structures. |
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Energy and Sustainability |
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Clean energy and environmental sustainability are clearly the greatest societal challenges
of our time. They hinge on the development of new materials capable of fulfilling
and advancing our needs while meeting the requirements of a circular economy. Making
highly efficient energy-harvesting and -storage materials is crucial for addressing
those grand challenges. Research efforts in this area include understanding process-structure-property
relationship of energy-related materials, design of gas separation/capture membranes,
and new approaches to plastics/thermosets recycling.
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Materials for Biology and Health |
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Nature has evolved to produce remarkable materials ranging from the precise way proteins fold to enable function to the hierarchical self-assembly observed in bone development. These processes all fundamentally involve polymers. Research on biomaterials within the School of Polymer Science and Engineering aims to mimic these processes with synthetic materials and utilize these for a broad range of applications including tissue regeneration, drug delivery, programmed self-assembly, and novel bioactive surface chemistries. |
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High-Performance Polymers, Composites, and Coatings |
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Polymer composites are multi-phase materials comprised of a polymer matrix and reinforcing agents that when combined result in a synergistic enhancement of properties. The science, technology, and engineering of these materials is central to many emerging technologies. Research in this area spans a broad range of topics such as polymer matrix science, nanocomposites, fabrication engineering, interfacial science and multi-scale structure-property relationships, high performance coating. |
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The School of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi is housed in the 104,000 sq ft Shelby F. Thames Polymer Science Research Center on the Hattiesburg Campus. Please see below for some of our facilities