The International Research Training Group (IRTG): "Soft Matter Science: Concepts for the Design of Functional Materials" Group is both a research programme, interdisciplinary and international doctoral training programme involving the universities of Strasbourg, Freiburg, Basel and Mulhouse.
This group's aim is to give structure to scientific collaboration in the area of Soft Matter Science. Chemists, physicists, engineers and biologists from the four universities will pool their skills in order to make new discoveries in this important field of materials nanoscience.
Soft Matter Science is all the systems of which the particularity is the sensitivity to external stimuli. These systems tend to reorganise themselves and sometimes to self-assemble as soon as a stimulus presents itself. Often these changes, which are observed macroscopically, come from a restructuring on a microscopic scale. At present the principal challenge is to understand and monitor the relation between the applied stimuli and the distortion of systems operating at a macro and microscopic level. The question is how to improve our understanding of this research topic and develop new concepts to invent materials with similar properties to those which exist in the natural world.
To this end the IRTG network is working on three major interdisciplinary topics:
- the monitoring and control of the soft matter assembly process
- invention and improvement of multi-component systems in soft matter
- better understanding of the make-up of soft matter systems, most especially their interfaces
Eucor Partners
- Universität Freiburg
- Universität Basel
- Université de Strasbourg
- Université de Haute-Alsace
