Our perceptions of soft materials (e.g., polymers or liquid crystals) rely mostly on bulk macroscopic properties and on observations made after synthesis and processing are complete. However, to best design soft materials we must gain insights into their structure and dynamics on length scales ranging from molecular to micron-scale, as all these details govern macroscopic behavior. We use multi-modal nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to investigate and quantify molecular motion, structure, dynamics, and morphology. Thus, we hope to span the molecular and macroscopic worlds, both to give a deeper picture of soft material behavior and to inform synthesis and processing efforts.
