Phase change materials (PCMs) absorb, store or release energy when they change from liquid to solid and thus can regulate temperature in personal care products (such as cooling pillows, pads and patches in sporting and biomedical products), as well as for regulation of temperature in buildings. One promising type of phase change materials -inorganic salt hydrates - is inflammable and thermally efficient but suffers from fluidity/leakage during thermal cycling. The challenge is to controllably shape stabilize these materials without sacrificing their thermal performance.

This project explores the use of star-shaped block copolymers to control thermomechanical properties of the resulting PCM-polymer composites, i.e. salogels. The team addresses the challenges of polymer solubility and gelation (i.e. formation of a polymer network) in a complex ionic environment of inorganic salt hydrates via the use of material discovery and optimization using modeling, theory and AI/machine learning (ML) in a coordinated US-India team effort. This project provides a knowledge base that will correlate molecular parameters of star polymers and type of inorganic salt hydrates with thermomechanical properties of salogels, enabling accelerated development of salogels for diverse applications.

The project will create a fertile training ground for the graduate, undergraduate students and high school students. Examples include hands-on demo on the salogel cooling pads and high-performance research computing outreach events for K-12 students.