Participating Faculty & Research Projects
List of participating faculty & possible research projects
Our goal with the proposed research projects is to enrich students’ education by integrating research and education in active and collaborative research, and through individual mentoring and support networks.
The below descriptions are examples of possible research projects within the NSF REU program. Research projects are based on three main energy topics: Molecular Mimics of Photosynthetic Systems, Nanomaterials for Energy Applications, and Li Ion Batteries and Polymeric Materials for Solar Cells. New projects for 2012 are also listed below.
Students applying to the 3M Fellowship program may indicate interest in any of the below projects or research groups in the department of chemistry (from the main chemistry web site http://www.chem.psu.edu)
Research Topic: Nanomaterials for Energy Applications
1. Project Title: Nanoscale Rectifying Junctions for Photocatalysis and Photoelectrochemistry
Faculty Mentors: Thomas E. Mallouk and Raymond E. Schaak
Project Description: There is growing interest in the development of nanoscale rectifiers with electronic properties. For this reason it is of utmost importance to investigate the electrical and photoelectrical properties of the rectifiers. The goal of this collaborative project is to develop nanoscale rectifiers based on thin layers of oxide and oxynitride materials, and to understand the dynamics of charge separation within them at a fundamental level.
Students will learn to structurally and electrically characterize oxide-oxide junctions, and photosensitized junctions. They will learn proper sample preparation, and how to conduct AFM, electrochemical and photoelectrochemical techniques. Students interested in performing computational calculations have additional opportunities to perform electronic structure modeling using VASP or Gaussian 03, and will use graphical interface GaussView 5, iMol, or VMD to build the molecular structures, retrieve and view the results.
2. Project Title: Photocatalytic Materials
Faculty Mentor: Raymond Schaak
Project Description: Using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is a powerful approach for clean fuel generation. However, most of the metal oxide photoanode materials that support photocatalytic water splitting do not effectively absorb incident solar radiation because their bandgap energies are too large, falling outside of the maximum output region of the solar spectrum. The goal of this project is to develop and exploit alternative low-temperature chemical routes to metal oxynitrides in an effort to expand the library of available metal oxynitride semiconductors with visible-wavelength bandgaps and discover new photocatalytic materials.
Students will learn advanced inorganic synthetic techniques, both molecular and solid-state, and include training and hands-on experience with powder XRD, TEM, SEM, TGA/DSC, and UV-Vis (including diffuse reflectance).
3. Project Title: Transport and Charge Transfer in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids
Faculty Mentor: Mark Maroncelli
Project Description: Room temperature ionic liquids are molten salts that are comprised of bulky and asymmetric ions such that they remain liquid at or near room temperature. Recent recognition that such materials can be tailor-made to possess a range of desirable properties has lead to myriad explorations into their potential uses spanning virtually all areas of chemistry. Among the most promising energy-related uses of ionic liquids are as “solvent-less” electrolytes in dye-sensitized solar cells, batteries, and supercapacitors. Our research involves fundamental studies of electron transfer and molecule and change transport in ionic liquids that underpins these applications. We focus on using ultrafast electronic spectroscopy, NMR measurements, and computer simulations to study intramolecular and bimolecular electron transfer and solute diffusion in ionic liquids with the goal of understanding how these processes differ in ionic liquid versus conventional solvents and how to model them in the former solvents.
Students interested in these experiments will use steady-state and picosecond time-resolved measurements of fluorescence measurements, as well as pulsed field gradient NMR spectroscopy techniques. For students interested in computational research, Smoluchowski-equation modeling the data generated by the quenching experiments using in-house code or participation in molecular dynamics simulations related to these experiments is also available.
4. Project Title: Pathway to More Efficient Quantum Dot Solar Cells
Faculty Mentors: John B. Asbury and Raymond E. Schaak
Project Description: A central problem in the development of solar power as an alternative energy supply is the ability to fabricate solar cells inexpensively and with high throughput. Solar cells composed of colloidal quantum dots are attractive alternatives to current silicon cells because they can be produced much less expensively using high throughput processing. This REU project will work toward understanding how interactions of organic ligands with the surfaces of inorganic quantum dots influence the density of defects at the surfaces in an effort to develop more efficient colloidal quantum dot solar cells.
Students working on this project will synthesize colloidal quantum dots and characterize these using TEM, XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis, and TGA/DSC. In a second project an REU student will use time-resolved infrared spectroscopy in conjunction with transient photocurrent measurements to characterize the defects in the quantum dots.
Research Topic: Li Ion Batteries and Polymeric Materials for Solar Cells
5. Project Title: Fabrication of Polymer Nanostructures
Faculty Mentor: Michael Hickner
Project Description: Creating very small objects and studying their unique structure and properties is an important area of nanotechnology. Many fabrication methods have been devised for creating nanoscale objects, however, most of these techniques, such as lithography, require large, expensive machinery and many processing steps. Shown in the figure to the right is an example of a disordered polymer that shows good alignment after thermal annealing due to the arrangement of the block copolymer phases. In this project students will use block copolymer directed assembly methods to create aligned polymeric nanoscale structures.
Students will process block copolymers using a variety of techniques such as spin casting and zone annealing. The properties of the polymeric nanostructures will then be examined by atomic force microscopy and infrared spectroscopy, and their conductivity will be evaluated to determine what anisotropy exists in their transport properties due to the structure of the aligned phases.
6. Project Title: Design and Synthesis of Polymers for Energy Applications
Faculty Mentor: Harry Allcock
Project Description: The Allcock research group has developed new fuel cell membranes based on the polyphosphazene platform and a broad range of polymers that are good solvents for salts are under investigation as advanced electrolytes in rechargeable lithium batteries and dye-based solar cells. The advantages of these polymers for energy-related applications are resistance to combustion and chemical/electrochemical decomposition and transparency to radiation throughout the visible region and near ultraviolet. Research in the group revolves around the development of new synthesis methods to optimize materials properties and an understanding of structure-property relationships.
Students will learn to synthesize polymers and characterize them by techniques such as NMR, GPC, DSC, and TGA. They will also learn how to fabricate membranes and evaluate their conductivity by electrical impedance spectroscopy.
Research Topic: Molecular Mimics of Photosynthetic Systems
7. Project Title: Artificial Peptide Substituted Ru Complexes for Photoinduced Electron Transfer and Catalysis
Faculty Mentor: Mary Beth Williams
Project Description: Construction of molecular materials capable of harnessing solar energy for use in chemical reactions is a key step to realize artificial photosynthesis. Exploring methods by which multifunctional, inorganic structures can be self-assembled to create redox, catalytic and photoactive structures is an important aspect of this goal. The purpose of this collaborative project is to synthesize, model, and study artificial-peptide linked dimetallic Ru-M structures to understand how charge separation occurs following photoexcitation.
Students working on this project will learn: advanced inorganic synthesis, including complete characterization by a host of techniques (mass spectrometry, NMR spectroscopy, electrochemistry, etc.), and/or computational methods.
8. Project Title: Using “Drug Store” Reagents and Carbon Dioxide to Prepare Unnatural Amino Acids for use in Artificial Photosystems
Faculty Mentor: Scott T. Phillips
Project Description: The Williams group in the Department of Chemistry at Penn State is synthesizing unnatural photosystems for harvesting energy from the sun. These photosystems incorporate unnatural amino acids as diverse structural building blocks—the amino acids are critical for modulating the activity of the photosystems. In the Phillips group, we are devising new strategies for synthesizing the unnatural amino acids used in these photosystems. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the cost of the building blocks to reduce the expense of the photosystems. Our synthetic strategy (shown on the left) uses exceedingly inexpensive reagents such as hydrogen peroxide and carbon dioxide. We will determine the efficacy of this synthetic strategy and evaluate the range of compatible substrates.
Students involved in this project will learn advance organic synthesis techniques, including purification of the products with flash chromatography, preparative reverse-phase HPLC, or another suitable technique, characterization by 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, and mass spectroscopy.
New Research Topics
1. Project Title: Computational Modeling of Aggregation Phenomena in Petrochemical Mixtures
Faculty Mentor: Will Noid
Project Description: Petrochemical mixtures provide a vital source of energy and chemical feedstocks, yet the molecular interactions and structures governing their phase behavior remain poorly understand. Students working on this research project will employ state-of-the-art computational modeling techniques to investigate the aggregation phenomena of petrochemical mixtures.
2. Project Title: Physical Properties of Aged Mineral Dust Aerosol
Faculty Mentor: Miriam Freedman
Project Description: Some of the biggest challenges in modeling climate stem from large uncertainties in quantifying the interaction of aerosol particles with radiation. Mineral dust aerosol, the second largest emission by mass, is particularly difficult to model due to its varied shape and long residence time in the atmosphere. Students working on this project will characterize changes in the physical properties of model mineral dust aerosol upon aging using spectroscopic techniques and microscopy.
3. Project Title: Symmetry Enforced Unidirectional Electron Transfer
Faculty Mentor: Benjamin Lear
Project Description: Proton transport plays a critical role in many areas of science and technology -- from understanding the proper functioning of cellular metabolism to the design of efficient fuel cells for an alternative energy economy. We are engaged in studying ultrafast ground-state transport of protons -- both in bulk solutions and on surfaces -- using dynamic steady-state Raman microscopy. This project involves minimal synthesis, but much instrumentation work. Students will learn the intricacies of Raman and IR spectroscopy and will develop an appreciation for how dynamics affect bandshapes in these two spectroscopies.
4. Project Title: Molecular Catalysts for CO2 Conversion
Faculty Mentor: Alexander Radosevich
Project Description: Petrochemicals are a valuable source of chemical feedstocks and fuels, but the global resource is finite and non-renewable. Consequently, there is growing interest in developing new technologies for exploiting renewable carbon resources like atmospheric carbon dioxide and plant biomass. The goal of this research project is to develop robust and inexpensive molecular electrocatalysts for the conversion of CO2 and biomass polyols into high-energy, high-value outputs.
Students interested in this project will receive training in molecular inorganic synthesis and a full complement of characterization techniques including NMR, EPR, x-ray crystallography, and voltammetry.
5. Project Title: Cyanobacteria Conversion of Fatty Acids to Fuel
Faculty Mentors: Marty Bollinger, Squire Booker, Carsten Krebs
Project Description: Cyanobacteria are robust, rapidly growing, environmentally diverse, genetically manipulable, and, most importantly, photosynthetic organisms. They are capable of converting CO2 and sunlight into energy-rich biomolecules, including fatty acids. A two-step pathway recently reported by Schirmer and co-workers (Science, 2010, 329, 559-562) also allows these bacteria to convert fatty acids to formate and fuel alkanes. The potential to genetically engineer them to to make large quantities of fungible fuels via photosynthetically generated fatty acids has attracted a flurry of scientific, intellectual-property, and investment activity. These efforts would be facilitated by an understanding of the structure and function of the alkane-producing enzyme, aldehyde decarbonylase. This project will employ biochemical, kinetic, and spectroscopic approaches to determine the nature of the dimetal cofactor of this fascinating enzyme and the mechanism by which it catalyzes its novel reaction.
