There is a growing demand for smart and responsive polymeric materials providing new or improved functionalities and capabilities such as shape memory properties, high conductivity, and engineered transport characteristics. Advancing the design and understanding of these materials creates new possibilities for innovative processing techniques and multifunctional integration, allowing multiple capabilities to be embedded within a single material solution. This contributes to greater resource efficiency and supports the development of next-generation technologies in critical application areas such as mobility, energy, space and defence.
One primary focus of the group is the development of advanced organic materials for applications such as actuation, energy storage, sorption, transport, and sensing. Equally important is the use of advanced polymer chemistry and engineering approaches to produce high-performance polymers, elastomers and (nano)composites. In parallel, the group addresses challenges related to the development of novel computational approaches for polymer melts—both single- and multiphase—and solutions and their interactions with nanoparticles. This includes efforts to understand, predict and design the structure and behaviour of (ionic) nanocomposites, particularly in terms of viscoelastic, mechanical, tribological, and transport properties. Finally, the pursuit of smart and responsive materials drives research into 3D and 4D printing as advanced manufacturing techniques for producing functional structures.
The Responsive Polymeric and Particulate Materials group utilizes innovative synthetic approaches and advanced processing techniques, guided by polymer physics, to design and control the responses of novel functional polymeric materials and (nano)composites. This also extends to the components from which they are produced (e.g., monomers, polymers, additives, particles), with the aim of meeting critical societal and industrial needs.
The group develops new approaches for the synthesis of advanced thermoplastics, thermosets, elastomers, and (nano)composites with targeted properties, supported by expertise in moisture- and air-sensitive chemistries, high-pressure processes, and advanced characterization techniques. Focus areas include the chemistry, physics and transport behaviour of charged (macro)molecular systems (e.g. ionic liquids, polyelectrolytes) as well as the structure, dynamics and physical properties of polymers and nanocomposites. These efforts are underpinned by multiscale modelling and atomistic simulations using high-performance computing resources, along with in-depth expertise in advanced scattering techniques (e.g. x-ray, neutron), contact mechanics (including adhesion, friction and surface interactions), and the fracture mechanics, failure, fatigue behaviour and durability of polymers. The resulting materials and insights are further applied to 3D/4D printing and polymer processing, with particular emphasis on reactive extrusion.
In the Responsive Polymeric and Particulate Materials group, focus areas include:
Sustainable and thermally Amplified Felts and Foams. Innovative Application of reactively extruded biobased nanocomposites
Mugemana C., Cardona C.I., Ozyigit S., Hao J., Grysan P., Delfrari D., Dieden R., Verge P., Shaplov A.S., Ruch D., Fuentes C.A.
Composites Part A Applied Science and Manufacturing, vol. 203, art. no. 109578, 2026
Fortuin J., Leclercq C.C., Silva R.K., Shaplov A.S., Contal S., Cambier S., Iken M., Fogliano V., Soukoulis C.
Food Hydrocolloids, vol. 172, art. no. 111999, 2026
Advancing Polypropylene/Bamboo Fiber Composites With a Novel PPgMA Pre-Coating Technique
Chrysafi I., Mertz G., Berthé V., Addiego F., Tachon J., Fuentes C.A.
Polymer Composites, vol. 47, n° 1, pp. 597-614, 2026