John Rabolt
Karl W. and Renate Boer Professor
rabolt@udel.edu
p: 831-4476
f: 302-831-4545
211 DuPont Hall
Dr. Rabolt`s research interests are in the area of polymer deformation and orientation, electrospinning polymer nanofibers, organic thin films, IR/Raman spectroscopy, and biomolecular materials for tissue engineering. An additional area of research that has evolved over the last decade has been instrumental development. A new infrared technique that promises to change the time scale for observing new phenomena (fast reactions, polymer fracture, irreproducible events, etc.) in materials was developed in Dr. Rabolt`s lab and uses a dispersive spectrograph and a focal plane array. The new technique, planar array IR (PA-IR), has no moving parts, is capable of double beam operation, and can record an infrared spectrum in less than 10 milliseconds. Recently, this instrument has been used to study "real-time" Langmuir film compression, liquid crystal reorientation, and cyclic elastic deformation of polymer films.
