15th Dresden Polymer Discussion
Polymer Materials in the Transition from Responsiveness to Interactivity and Adaptivity
Meissen, April 17 to 20, 2016
Looking back on the conference
You may still apply for a poster contribution by submitting an abstract.
Responsiveness towards environmental stimuli is a classical feature of polymeric materials. However in many cases, not just passive responsiveness, but rather interaction with the environment often resulting in complex adaptation of materials properties is desired. Natural systems show many examples of these features, such as bone remodeling upon load, healing and regeneration processes or chemotaxis. Modern polymer science starts to provide the tools necessary to translate principles of adaptivity and interactivity to artificial systems, thus providing new options for controlling interactions with biosystems, but as well giving access to the next generation of smart materials, which have no biological blueprints, but only share generic concepts. In this conference, we focus the role of synthetic polymer and polymer composite systems in this development.
Topics covered will be:
- Synthesis and assembly of interactive coatings
- Healing and regeneration in biomimetic and artificial systems
- Polymeric building blocks
- Composite materials
- Use of responsiveness for actuation and sensing
- Experimental methods for studying dynamics of structure/property changes on multiple length scales
- Multi-scale modelling of self-healing and adaptive systems
Most of the presentations are invited talks by leading international experts.