Our research involves materials synthesis by templating and self-assembly methods. Using polymeric, surfactant, or colloidal templates we control the architecture of porous and nanostructured materials and create products with special properties. Examples include electrodes for rechargeable lithium batteries that can be charged more quickly, cluster-based materials for single-site catalysis, polymer/graphene nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical properties, non-toxic pigments that can change colors, sorbents for toxic heavy metals and more. Students involved in our multi-disciplinary research become hand-on users of a wide range of modern instrumentation for materials characterization.
