Events

The natural world interweaves structure and chemistry to carefully control light for vibrant colors and thermal management. Beyond nature, optical materials are integral parts of society with applications including the color of clothing and displays, sensing and encryption, and radiative heating and cooling. However, innovation is needed for scalable pathways to generate new structures and chemistries that uniquely control the wavelength, polarization, and angular response of light. This talk will explore two pathways for creating optical materials: 1) vapor phase processing as a sustainable and scalable route for creating hybrid material chemistries and 2) polymer self-assembly for generating large area bio-inspired structures for optical metamaterials. The first portion of this talk will focus on creating hybrid organic-inorganic materials through vapor phase infiltration to attach sustainably derived dye molecules to the surface of films and fabrics. The second part will expand into using structure to control the polarization of light through nanoscale plasmonic designs templated from block polymer self-assembly. The final portion of this talk will discuss combining structure and chemistry for radiative cooling fibers and films with simultaneous solar rejection and thermal emissivity to deep space.

Emily McGuinness is driven by a dual passion of finding creative solutions to societal problems and launching the careers of the next generation of scientists and engineers. Enraptured by using materials to tell stories during high school theatre, Emily pursued degrees in Textile Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as a Park and Centennial Scholar at NC State. Her fascination with materials drove her to earn a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech with Professor Mark Losego where she became an expert in vapor phase processing and served as research mentor for eight undergraduate students. To expand her scientific horizons, Emily sought a postdoctoral fellowship at the intersection of polymer self-assembly and optics at the University of Minnesota with Professors Vivian Ferry and Chris Ellison. She continued her love for teaching and mentorship as a research mentor for REU and graduate students, through science of art centered outreach, and as a co-instructor for Intro to MSE. Emily is grateful for the public and private funding that has facilitated her research including an NDSEG fellowship, NSF eFellows fellowship, and L’Oreal FWIS award. She has been honored to receive awards including the Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis award, AVS Dorothy M. and Earl S. Hoffman award, and AVS Thin Film Division James Harper Award.