(7dt) Liquid-Phase Characterization, Modification, and Controlled Assembly of Novel 2D Nanomaterials

In the last few years, graphene and other 2D nanomaterials have been exploited for their unique properties to prepare electronic devices, sensors, membranes, and energy storage devices. Most advances in this field are based on the fundamental understanding of the physics and properties of these materials in the solid state. Meanwhile, little is known about their structure-property relationship in the liquid phase. The 2D nanomaterials produced in the liquid phase are a complicated combination of nanosheets with different aspect ratios, surface chemistry, and level of colloidal stability. The fundamental understanding of these characteristics of polydispersed nanosheets in liquid media presents an opportunity to control their assembly behavior. New macrostructures obtained from the self-assembly of 2D nanosheets hold the potential to revolutionize a vast range of technological applications including sensing, catalysis, structural composites, batteries, and supercapacitors.

In my future research lab, I will apply various techniques to systematically characterize the surface properties and colloidal behavior of nanosheets in liquid media. My current knowledge of graphene-based colloidal dispersion, their assembly in aqueous media, and novel characterization techniques for polydispersed materials, obtained in Prof. Micah Green’s lab at Texas A&M University and Prof. Michael Strano’s lab at MIT, will be the cornerstone of my future research as a faculty member. I will use single particle tracking techniques, optical characterization, and controlled deformation with simultaneous measurement of microscopic stresses to study the interfacial energy, interactions, and mechanics of 2D nanomaterials as polydispersed colloidal systems. Additionally, I will use computational methods to precisely predict and quantify polydispersity of the nanosheets. In the next phase of my future research, I will apply functionalization, mechanical deformation, and surface treatment as means to tune the assembly of the 2D nanomaterials into desired 2D and 3D structures. Eventually, I will focus on commercialization and process development to prepare these finely tuned nanosheets assemblies to make them available for industrial applications.

Teaching Interests:

As a new faculty, I will use my experiences as graduate teaching fellow and teaching assistant to assist the undergraduate students in gaining a fundamental understanding of the key concepts of chemical engineering. I expect all my students to apply these concepts to a wide variety of physical systems based on classifying them into categories of problems. I will teach my students to tackle these smaller components through defining the system in terms of proper mathematical models and then using key techniques to achieve a solution. Following this algorithm enables the students to approach any engineering problem in real-life applications. In regard to graduate education, my goal is to empower students to become independent academic researchers. I will focus my efforts on not only imparting scientific knowledge, but also teaching the methodology of scientific research and independent thinking. My ultimate goal is to produce researchers who think in a multidisciplinary fashion and can generate creative solutions for challenging and complicated situations. While my teaching experience allows me to feel comfortable with teaching any of the core courses in the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum, my specific teaching interests include transport, numerical methods in chemical engineering, and reaction engineering. My teaching interests for elective and graduate level courses closely match my research interests, and I would like to teach or develop courses in the areas of Introduction to Polymers, Advanced Functional Materials, and Colloids and Interfacial Phenomena. In particular, the latter course will cover an overview of the fundamental topics in colloids including the colloidal interaction at atomic and molecular level, interfacial forces, and self-assembly of the colloidal particles.