Event
CHBE Seminar: Dr. Khushboo Suman, IIT Madras
Friday, October 30, 2026
11:00 a.m.
Room 2108 Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
Patricia Lorenzana
301-405-1935
plorenza@umd.edu
"Multiscale monitoring of thermally driven self-assembly and microstructural evolution in gels"
Abstract: Thermoresponsive soft materials offer the exciting ability to change their structure and rheology on demand with temperature, and understanding how thermal history shapes their gelation, transition kinetics, and microstructure opens the door to designing them with greater precision. In this talk, we shall discuss two such systems: plant-based oleogels, motivated by the demand for healthier alternatives to saturated and trans fats, and Pluronic® triblock copolymer solutions, whose behavior is governed by temperature-dependent micellization and micellar self-assembly. We systematically investigate the effect of vital parameters such as gelator concentration, thermal stimuli, and ageing time on the viscoelastic properties of the gels. Microscopy and rheo-microscopy reveal needle-like crystalline structures in the oleogel near room temperature and fewer ordered structures at elevated temperatures. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) on Pluronic solution shows that both the micellization temperature and peak intensity vary systematically with thermal ramp rate, and rheology reveals a sharp sol-to-soft-solid transition on heating. We observe a novel multi-step transition during cooling, indicating a more complex reorganization pathway, with intermediate metastable states, than is typically assumed for reversible micellization. This transition is transient and weakens over successive thermal cycles. A phenomenological model captures the kinetics and multi-step changes in viscoelastic parameters. We also perform SAXS which shows evolution from a disordered unimer/micelle state at low temperature to a highly ordered lattice with long-range spatial correlation at elevated temperature. Together, these studies establish structure–property relationships linking thermal stimuli, transition kinetics, and microstructure in thermoresponsive systems.
Bio: Dr. Khushboo Suman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Madras. Prior to joining IIT Madras, she was at University of Delaware for her postdoc and IIT Kanpur for her PhD. She is also a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Physics of Fluids journal. She received second place in the Future of Rheology Award 2024 from the Society of Rheology (USA) and the Young Engineer Award from the Institution of Engineers 2026 (India).
