| Dr. Rabolt's research interests are in the area of polymer deformation and orientation, electrospinning polymer nanofibers, organic thin films, IR/Raman spectroscopy, and biomolecular materials for tissue engineering. An additional area of research that has evolved over the last decade has been instrumental development. A new infrared technique that promises to change the time scale for observing new phenomena (fast reactions, polymer fracture, irreproducible events, etc.) in materials was developed in Dr. Rabolt's lab and uses a dispersive spectrograph and a focal plane array. The new technique, planar array IR (PA-IR), has no moving parts, is capable of double beam operation, and can record an infrared spectrum in less than 10 milliseconds. Recently, this instrument has been used to study "real-time" Langmuir film compression, liquid crystal reorientation, and cyclic elastic deformation of polymer films. |
