(4hc) Engineering Nanostructured Soft Materials for Electrochemical Processes and Water Treatments

Membrane technology is playing a prominent role in enabling an industry with more sustainable chemicals and a world driven by carbon-neutral energy. Ion conducting polymer electrolytes are at the heart of many electrochemical cells such as fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries. In addition, they are the key compartment for water treatment technologies such as electrodialysis for seawater desalination and chloralkali process for ethylene dichloride (EDC, the precursor to form polyvinyl chloride) production. However, one of the main hurdles that prevent the advancement or the commercialization of these processes is the development of mechanical robust, highly ion conductive, well ion selective, and excellent chemically resistive polymer electrolytes. Engineering these systems is not merely finding suitable chemistries or putting together good materials. It requires comprehensive understandings of the structure-property relationships at different scales.

Through the years, I have established a methodology to quantitatively probe ion/electron transport in nanostructured media (from sub-nanometer to a few tens of nanometers) (postdoc), investigated the chemical stability of ion exchange membrane with in-situ diagnostic tools to determine the degradation mechanism, and systematically developed a novel platform for high-performance liquid-liquid fuel cell (Ph.D.). The overreaching objective of my research is to integrate my skills in leveraging self-assembly of functional soft materials (liquid crystal and block copolymer) to form ordered nanostructure with my strong background in electrochemical engineering to design novel polymer electrolytes for electrochemical processes and water treatments.

My research interests are in three distinct areas: (1) understanding ion/electron transport in nanostructured block copolymers and liquid crystals, (2) optimizing efficient pH-gradient-enabled microscale bipolar interfaces for liquid-liquid fuel cell, and (3) engineering sub-2 nm structured liquid crystals for efficient water treatment processes.

Teaching Interests:

I have my master’s and a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering, which has prepared me to teach any core chemical engineering curriculum. Specifically, I am passionate about teaching chemical reaction engineering, transport phenomena, process control, and unit lab operation at the undergraduate and graduate levels along with thermodynamics at the undergraduate level. For these courses, I intend to combine electrochemical related problems with the basic principles in the textbook to elucidate concepts taught in the classroom.

I have my undergraduate degree in Polymer Material and Engineering, and my research background combines polymer fundamentals with electrochemical processes. This makes me well qualified to teach ChE electives in polymer science and electrochemical engineering. I would teach polymer science covering topics including polymer chemistry, polymer physics, polymer characterization methods, structure-property relationship, and applications. I would teach electrochemical engineering to understand processes such as ion transport in liquids and solids, charge transfer reaction across interfaces, heat generation, and conduction, etc. I will illustrate how the fundamentals of chemical reaction engineering and transport phenomena learnt from ChE core courses can help us better understand electrochemical processes by giving specific examples to the course.