Research
Fig 1. Schematic of colloidal building blocks for NIMs
Research in KAUST-CU focuses on a new class of organic-inorganic hybrid materials, Nanoscale Ionic Materials (NIMs), recently discovered at Cornell.
NIMs integrate the facile processability, light-weight, and low-cost features of organic polymers with functionality provided by inorganic nanostructures into a single, new materials platform with applications in multiple emerging fields of technology.
To create NIMs, a charged oligomer (small polymer), termed the corona, is chemically attached to inorganic nanocores (Fig. 1). The charge on the core is balanced by a counter ion species A, which can also be an oligomer.
Emmanuel P. Giannelis, Walter R. Reed Professor of Engineering, Chair Materials Science and Engineering and co-Director KAUST-CU with graduate students Michelle Wu and Robert Rodriguez
This design circumvents problems with miscibility and interfacial strength that plague organic-inorganic hybrids, and provides multiple handles for exerting near molecular control on material properties.
Research in KAUST-CU is organized around four thrust areas:
- Carbon dioxide capture and advanced sequestration technologies
- Photovoltaics and energy storage systems
- Desalination and advanced water purification
- Nanomaterials for oil and gas exploration and production
Our collaborative research plan calls for fundamental research on the synthesis and characterization of NIMs, development of computer simulation and theoretical tools for understanding their interactions, and implementation of systems engineering and process evaluation studies to assess their applications.
Lynden A. Archer, Marjorie L. Hart Chair in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and co-Director KAUST-CU with graduate students Praveen Agarwal and Laura Olenick
Research in KAUST-CU is carried out by an interdisciplinary team of students, postdoctoral associates, and faculty from Cornell and seven partner universities (Cambridge, Columbia, ETH Lausanne, Princeton, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Houston, and Yale). This team augments Cornell's considerable strengths in nanomaterials synthesis and characterization (CCMR, CNF, CHESS) with complementary expertise in theory, systems integration and process engineering available through our partner institutions.
6/1/08 - 5/31/09 Annual Technical Report
(If you do not have a Cornell net id and would like a copy of the report, please contact cs249@cornell.edu.)
