MoS2 is a ubiquitous catalyst for hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis reactions for hydrotreating of petroleum sources for the removal of sulfur and nitrogen containing compounds. Through exploration of this activity, structural models for MoS2 as a series of stacked S-Mo-S platelets held together by Van der Waals forces has been developed....
Graphene and graphene oxide (GO), a highly oxidized form of graphene, are materials with incredibly interesting chemical and mechanical properties. These materials have high surface areas and electrical properties that can be tuned by reducing the amount of oxygenates on the surface. They have already demonstrated their importance in the...
Granular materials exhibit a wide variety of fascinating physical properties that can be observed both in nature and industry. The goal of this work is to better understand the flow, mixing, and segregation of granular materials in a prototypical system, the rotating tumbler, using numerical modeling, specifically, the Discrete Element...
The genetic information in DNA is transcribed to mRNA and then translated to proteins, which form the building blocks of life. Translation, or protein synthesis, is hence a central cellular process. Decades of experimentation have elucidated a vast wealth of molecular information about discrete translation steps, but the sheer complexity...
Resource recovery is a promising category of polymer recycling where polymeric waste is converted via thermal or chemical means to monomer and chemical feedstocks. Specifically, pyrolysis is an attractive method because of its simplicity and ability to handle a heterogeneous feedstock. Polymer pyrolysis is characterized by a complex free radical...
Natural tissues can have complex architectures characterized by the organization of multiple cells into structures, such as branching networks of the vascular or nervous systems. This cellular organization arises, in part, from spatial patterns in the expression of soluble factors, which create concentration gradients that direct cellular processes during morphogenesis....
Separation of DNA molecules by electrophoresis through entangled polymer solutions continues to be an important tool for genetic analysis, especially Sanger-based DNA sequencing. Separations of DNA on microfluidic devices are much more efficient than in capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, such that the implementation of DNA sequencing onto microchips promises to...
The recent tightening of permissible NOx release from diesel-powered engines has intensified the search for a catalytic system that can effectively remove NOx under challenging diesel exhaust conditions. Hydrogen-assisted selective catalytic reduction (H2-SCR) using supported palladium catalysts offers significant promise for lean NOx treatment due to its high activity at...
Gradient copolymers are novel materials that possess a gradual variation in composition along the chain, thereby forming an intermediate structure between random and block copolymers. As such, they are a model system to investigate the effect of molecular structure on fundamental properties of copolymers and may be useful in many...