Bacterial Elastomers, Structured Liquids and EUV Resists, Oh My! Building Better Functional Materials by Probing the Solid-Liquid Interface at the Nanoscale

I will present our use of advanced scanned probe techniques to investigate in-situ the nanoscale properties of the solid-liquid interface for soft materials. We used these interfacial properties to assemble a bacterial elastomer, an Engineered Living Material built on the crosslinking of the fresh water bacterium, C. Crescentus. The bacterial elastomer is regenerable and responsive to external stimuli. We also create all liquid structures with persistent shape called structured liquids. We show how the dense packing of nanoparticles at the liquid-liquid interface leads to jamming which solidifies the interface allowing for the formation of far-from-equilibrium liquid shapes. Lastly, I will present our efforts to investigate the dissolution process for high performance EUV resist materials and characterize the factors that influence resist patterning performance.