Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering Radhakrishna (Suresh) Sureshkumar and his former doctorate student Senyuan Liu G’24, in collaboration with the BioInspired Institute, authored a paper that was featured on the front cover of the leading scientific journal Langmuir. The journal is published by the American Chemical Society (ACS). Their research was supported by the ACS Petroleum Research Fund.

In 2010, Sureshkumar and his colleagues published a paper in Nature Materials where they found that surfactants, or soapy solutions, change into a gel-like material when exposed to a strong flow. This change happens because the flow rearranges the molecular assemblies in the solution into larger structures instead of breaking them apart—a behavior that is rather counter-intuitive.

Liu and Sureshkumar presented the mechanisms underlying the formation of such flow-induced structures in their recent paper. Specifically, they used molecular dynamics simulations to study how the shape and internal makeup of molecular assemblies change when exposed to flow cycles. Flow-induced structures are useful for targeted drug delivery, medical diagnostics and creating functional nanomaterials.

“This is an important milestone in my academic journey,” says Sureshkumar. “It’s indeed gratifying that Senyuan and I are able to provide a deeper understanding of flow-mediated molecular reorganization based on the principles of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics.”