The Soft Matter Laboratory carries out a wide range of research and offers a wealth of expertise. It is now widely accepted that innovation is more likely to occur when people from different disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of expertise work together and share their thinking. Our researchers have common interests and complementary backgrounds (chemistry, physics, biochemistry, and engineering) and work together in teams with the aim of identifying industrial problems and implementing creative solutions to your most difficult problems.

We have a portfolio of research and consultancy projects involving industrial partners and are able to offer a variety of services including analysis, consultancy and collaborative research.

Our lab benefits from possessing a very wide range of world class facilities for research as well as analytical and technical services. In this context, we emphasize the following advantages of partnering with us:

  • We offer consultancy services to meet your needs such as customized analytical services, troubleshooting, etc.

  • We offer access to modern facilities for the characterization of materials as well as training under the guidance of expert technical staff. We have the specialists with the technical and scientific skills to carry out the analysis of your samples

  • We work with companies to develop new products and innovative solutions to their problems.

  • We work with companies to help them exploit our “know-how” and intellectual property.

  • We offer custom-designed specialty analytical test services to solve the problems of industrial customers.

Modern materials science and engineering requires sophisticated and modern equipment. We are equipped with state-of- art facilities allowing our experienced technical staff to comprehensively characterize the physical and chemical properties of a broad variety of materials and to provide
advice on your materials engineering and processing issues. In particular, our facilities are designed to address equipment needs in the areas of polymer, colloidal, interface and materials sciences.
These facilities include:

  • Dynamic light scattering (DLS)
  • Surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR)
  • Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)
  • Raman spectroscopy
  • Small- and wide angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS)
  • X-ray reflectivity (XRR)
  • Grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS)
  • Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)
  • Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)
  • Rheology
  • Physisorption Analyzer
  • Fluorescence spectroscopy
  • UV/VIS spectroscopy
  • Spectroscopic ellipsometry
  • Contact angle goniometry (wetting measurements)
  • Force tensiometer

The Soft Matter Laboratory is interested in undertaking industrial projects with a clear focus on translating “know-how”, intellectual property and innovation into products and services to yield economic benefit. At present collaboration opportunities with industry can be seized in the following ways.

  • Consortia: Industry consortia programmes draw upon the technical expertise of the Soft Matter Laboratory to help the local industry move up the value chain. Such programmes encompass direct basic and applied R&D across different research themes in our laboratory.

  • Joint Research: Joint research programmes are collaborations and/or alliances between a private company and the Soft Matter Laboratory that help to enhance the technology edge of the company by the technology transfer from our lab. Such partnerships represent a potentially fruitful situation for industry to gain new insights and promote the advancement of their technology as well as the development of new protocols and techniques.

  • Lab-in- Lab:  The Lab-in- Lab is initiative in which the Soft Matter Laboratory provides partners with infrastructure and framework at an early stage of their research & development projects. This initiative has the unique advantage of implementing their R&D plans under very favorable
    conditions, to allow SMEs to test R&D programmes before making major capital investments.

  • Industrial Fellows: This is a formal program whereby industrial scientists and technicians can spend significant time in our laboratory getting training in different areas of expertise (polymer science, colloidal chemistry, materials chemistry, surface chemistry, materials characterization, etc).
  • Short courses: We provide short courses and training for industrial partners with the participation of skilled, qualified and experienced scientists from our laboratory. You can get expert training in your areas of interest (polymer science, colloidal chemistry, materials chemistry, surface chemistry, materials characterization, etc). We can even tailor our courses to your specific requirements, across any area of expertise concerning soft matter research.