Carson Bruns

Carson Bruns, assistant professor (ATLAS Institute, Mechanical Engineering), seeks to make creative use of molecular nanotechnology to engineer materials for applications ranging from biohacking to energy transduction. His research involves the fabrication of tiny molecular and particulate building blocks that build themselves into more sophisticated structures by a process of self-assembly. After receiving undergraduate degrees in chemistry and religion from Luther College and a doctorate in organic chemistry from Northwestern University, Carson spent three years as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley before joining the faculty at CU Boulder in 2017.

Projects

• ChemBot
• Slide-Ring Materials
• Tech Tattoos
• Colloidal Rotaxanes: Polymer Particles with Mechanical Bonds

Publications

2023

Purnendu, Jess Hartcher‑O’Brien, Vatsal Mehta, Nicholas Colonnese, Aakar Gupta, Carson Bruns, Priyanshu Agarwal. 2023. "Fingertip Wearable High‑resolution Electrohydraulic Interface for Multimodal Haptics".  In: Proceedings of IEEE World Haptics Conference (Delft, Netherlands, July 10–13, 2023)

Karan Dikshit and Carson J. Bruns. 2023. "Slide‐Ring Materials Based on Self‐assembled Polyrotaxane “Molecular Necklaces”". In: Supramolecular Nanotechnology: Advanced Design of Self‐Assembled Functional Materials 2. (April 21, 2023)

Samuel C. Lamont, Kyle Weishaar, Carson J. Bruns, and Franck J. Vernerey. 2023. "Micromechanics and damage in slide-ring networks". In: Physical Review E 107, no. 4. (April 1, 2023)

Karan Vivek Dikshit, Aseem Milind Visal, Femke Janssen, Alexander Larsen, and Carson J. Bruns. 2023. "Pressure-Sensitive Supramolecular Adhesives Based on Lipoic Acid and Biofriendly Dynamic Cyclodextrin and Polyrotaxane Cross-Linkers". In: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 15, no. 13.

2022

Madhur Atreya, Stacie Desousa, John-Baptist Kauzya, Evan Williams, Austin Hayes, Karan Dikshit, Jenna Nielson, Abigail Palmgren, Sara Khorchidian, Shangshi Liu, Anupam Gopalakrishnan, Eloise Bihar, Carson J. Bruns, Richard Bardgett, John N. Quinton, Jessica Davies, Jason C. Neff, Gregory L. Whiting. 2022. "A Transient Printed Soil Decomposition Sensor Based on a Biopolymer Composite Conductor." In: Advanced Science 10, no. 5. (December 11, 2022)

Madhur Atreya, John-Baptist Kauzya, Stacie DeSousa, Evan Williams, Austin Hayes, Karan Dikshit, Jenna Nielson, Abigail Palmgren, Sara Khorchidian, Shangshi Liu, Anupama Gopalakrishnan, Eloise Bihar, Carson Bruns, Richard Bardgett, John Quinton, Jessica Davies, Jason Neff, and Gregory Whiting. 2022. “Novel Printed Soil Decomposition Sensors Based on Biodegradation.” No. EGU23-8573. In: Copernicus Meetings. (December 11, 2022)

Carson J. Bruns. 2022. "Moving forward in the semantic soup of artificial molecular machine taxonomy." In: Nature Nanotechnology. (December 9, 2022)

Carson J. Bruns, Wei Wang, and Keiji Hirose. 2022. "Advances in mechanically bonded molecules." In: Frontiers in Chemistry 10. (December 6, 2022)

Hyejin Kwon, Brian S. Newell and Carson J. Bruns. 2022. Redox-switchable host–guest complexes of metallocenes and [8]cycloparaphenylene. First published Sept 7, 2022. Nanoscale, advance article 

JL Butterfield, GP Penoncello, KV Dikshit, CJ Bruns. A Photochromic Intradermal Smart Tattoo Based on Diarylethene-Doped Polystyrene Nanoparticles for Personal γ-Ray Dosimetry. ACS Applied Nano Materials 2022, In Press. 

KV Dikshit, CJ Bruns. Chemorheological Monitoring of Cross-Linking in Slide-Ring Gels Derived from a-Cyclodextrin Polyrotaxanes. Front. Chem. 2022.

H Kwon, CJ Bruns. All-Conjugated Cycloparaphenylene-Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Host-Guest Complexes Stabilized by CH–π Interactions. Nano Research 2022, 15, 5545–5555.

Xin Zhou, Hyejin Kwon, Richard R. Thompson, Robert J. Herman,  Frank R. Fronczek, Carson J. Bruns and Semin Lee. 2021. Scalable synthesis of [8]cycloparaphenyleneacetylene carbon nanohoop using alkyne metathesis. Chemical Communications 2021, 10809–10956. (Oct. 25, 2021).

KV Dikshit, CJ Bruns. Post-Synthesis Modification of Slide-Ring Gels for Thermal and Mechanical Reconfiguration. Soft Matter 2021, 17, 5248–5257. 

Purnendu, Sasha M Novack, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mirela Alistar, Mark D Gross, Carson Bruns, and Daniel Leithinger. 2021. Electriflow: Soft Electrohydraulic Building Blocks for Prototyping Shape-changing Interfaces. Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1280–1290. (June 28-July 2, 2021–Virtual Event).

Purnendu, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mark D. Gross, Carson Bruns, Daniel Leithinger. 2021. Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators for Origami Inspired Shape-Changing Interfaces. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI '21 Extended Abstracts). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. (Yokohama, Japan–May 8-13, 2021).

A Parameswar, KV Dikshit, S Movafaghi, CJ Bruns, AP Goodwin. Mechanochemistry Activated Covalent Conjugation Reactions in Soft Hydrogels Induced by Interfacial Failure. ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 2021, 13, 1486–1492. (December 28, 2020).

Butterfield JL, Keyser SP, Dikshit KV, Kwon H, Koster MI, Bruns CJ. 2020. Solar Freckles: Long-Term Photochromic Tattoos for Intradermal Ultraviolet Radiometry. ACS Nano. 2020 Oct 27;14(10):13619-13628. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.0c05723. Epub 2020 Sep 22. PMID: 32961057. 

M Atreya, K Dikshit, G Marinick, J Nielson, C Bruns, GL Whiting. Poly(lactic acid)-Based Ink for Biodegradable Printed Electronics With Conductivity Enhanced Through Solvent Aging. ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 2020, 12, 23494–23501. (April 24, 2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c05196.

Bruns, C. J. Exploring and Exploiting the Symmetry-Breaking Effect of Cyclodextrins in Mechanomolecules. Symmetry 2019, 11, 1249.

Bruns, C. J. The Rise of Smart Tattoos. TEDxMileHigh Blog. 2019.

CJ Bruns, JF Stoddart, The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2016. 761 pp. ISBN: 9781119044000.

CJ Bruns, H Liu, MB Francis. Near-Quantitative Aqueous Synthesis of Rotaxanes via Bioconjugation to Oligopeptides and Proteins. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 15307­–15310.

CJ Bruns, JF Stoddart. Rotaxane-Based Molecular Muscles. Acc. Chem. Res. 2014, 47, 2186–2199.

CJ Bruns, D Fujita, M Hoshino, S Sato, JF Stoddart, M Fujita. Emergent Ion-Gated Binding of Cationic Host-Guest Complexes Within Cationic M₁₂L₂₄Molecular Flasks. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, 136, 12027–12034.

CJ Bruns, DJ Herman, JB Minuzzo, JA Lehrman, SI Stupp. Rationalizing Molecular Design in the Electrodeposition of Anisotropic Lamellar Nanostructures. Chem. Mater. 2013, 25, 4330–4339.