Courses

The following courses are currently being taught by Dr. Composto.

MSE 330 – Soft Materials
Prerequisite(s): Junior or Senior standing, CHEM 102.
Fall Term
This course will serve as an introduction of soft condensed matter to students with background in chemistry, physics and engineering. It covers general aspects of fundamental interactions between soft materials with applications involving polymers, colloids, liquid crystals, amphiphiles, food and biomaterials.

MSE 540 – Phase Transformation
Spring Term
The phase of a material determines macroscopic properties such as strength, diffusion, and permeability. Whereas thermodynamics provides an idealistic understanding of phase behavior, the real phase (composition) and morphology of a solid material depends on the rate of transformation from one state to another. Namely, kinetics is the study of the rates at which systems approach the ideal state predicted by thermodynamics. Thus, transport/diffusion underlies our understanding of phase transformations. Technology applications will include, polymer nanocomposites as kinetically arrested materials, rapid solidification to create new materials, purification methods for integrated circuits, and drug delivery.