Sea urchins are virtuosi of biomineralization, the process by which organisms build mineralized tissues. The embryonic animal exemplifies this with the formation of its endoskeletal spicule. The primary mesenchyme cells (PMCs) undertake spicule synthesis, which involves deposition of the initial granule, elongation of the spicule, and several choreographed changes...
Van der Waals, or layered, materials offer a flexible platform to tune properties via exfoliation down to the single- or few-layer limit; they are at the forefront of cutting-edge materials science and engineering research because of the innumerable ways to tune materials as a function of thickness or composition. Due...
Polymer and polymer/ceramic composites known as bone cements are commonly used in musculoskeletal reconstructive surgeries where bone tissue fixation, reinforcement, or void filling may be needed. Polymethylmethacrylate, PMMA, was the initial (and currently only) FDA-approved bone cement for bone-void filling applications yet faces many inherent material-based challenges that impacts its...
Over 10 billion tons of concrete are produced for the construction industry every year, making concrete the second most used substance on Earth, only surpassed by water. With such high importance as a building material, there is significant need for the ability to accurately model concrete behavior. As a quasi-brittle...
The development of functional materials with rationally designed hierarchical structure is an interdisciplinary challenge. Looking to nature for inspiration, we use small molecules that
engage in directed self-assembly through carefully tuned intermolecular interactions to construct
materials that have structure at multiple length scales. In this work, supramolecular structures
formed using...
Engineering responses of soft materials at hierarchical time and length scales is of great interest to both fundamental science and technological applications. In recent years, the hybridization between emerging soft condense matters and conventional hard condense matters keeps enriching the materials library of humankind and opens another largely-uncharted venue for...
In the face of a changing climate caused by anthropomorphic release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, major governments have committed to the reduction of CO2 and other emissions over time, requiring increased reliance on forms of carbon-free renewable energy. The inherent intermittency of renewable electricity sources creates a...
Solid oxide fuel and electrolysis cells (SOFCs and SOECs) must be engineered with the entire lifetime of their performance in mind. Electrochemical activity will decrease as degradative processes take effect, leading to higher overpotentials and decreased power outputs. Materials science and engineering can stave off these inefficiencies through an understanding...
Dendritic microstructures form during the solidification of a variety of metal parts, from traditionally cast engine blocks to 3D-printed specialty tooling. These dendrites can evolve through growth, coarsening, fragmentation, and the formation of a Columnar-to-Equiaxed Transition (CET), which all can greatly affect material properties. However, the basic science behind these...
Interfacial science brings together diverse areas of interest such as electronic materials, quantum materials, bio-membranes and catalysts. In-situ X-ray characterization techniques can be used to understand the assembly of atoms, molecules and supported nanoparticles at interfaces in complex environments. This thesis work focuses on the use of various X-ray characterization...
Graphene oxide (GO) is a heavily oxidized version of graphene, which is often made by oxidative chemical exfoliation from graphite powders. The reaction decorates the graphene sheets with oxygen-containing functional groups including hydroxyl and epoxide groups on the basal plane, as well as carboxyl groups on the edge, rendering the...
The past decade has seen the rapid progress of deep learning, which becomes a game-changing technique in different data-intensive domains, with the availability of large scale data, cost-effective computing hardware and more advanced learning theory and algorithms. Despite of the rapid progress of deep learning methods in daily-life applications, such...
The successful isolation of graphene marked the advent of two-dimensional (2D) materials. Their atomically thin structures enable unprecedented electrical, optical, and mechanical properties, which have triggered significant research interests in the past decade. For instance, they are promising candidates for the fabrication of flexible electronics, biological sensors, battery electrodes, and...
Thermoelectric devices utilize semiconducting n-type and p-type thermoelectric materials to convert heat into electricity. Despite their promise for deep space power generation or waste heat recovery, most high-performing thermoelectric materials reported in literature are absent in practical applications - partially due to inconsistent synthesis and poor mechanical performance. This work...
As the interest in rational synthesis for solid-state materials accelerates, there is an urgent need to understand the design principles concealed within these reactions. In situ material synthesis provides such an avenue to not only uncover these assembling rules, but also for finding new materials even in seemingly familiar phase...
Part I: Evaluating the relationship between Crosslink Kinetics and Thermodynamics with the hydrogel mechanics. The past two decades have witnessed a surge of applications built upon dynamic covalent chemistry (DCC), both attributed to the scope of developed reactions as well as their modularity.1-3 These reactions have comparable strengths to their...
The ability to control the crystalline ordering and morphology of polymeric nanomaterials is a grand challenge in the field of materials science, which could enable the development of functional materials able to solve long-standing problems in renewable energy and medicine. In this work, we explore a combination of supramolecular chemistry...
Scalable processing of well-defined interfaces is key not only for wider application of two-dimensional (2D) materials in technology but also for improved fundamental understanding. Atomic layer deposition has useful characteristics, especially self-limited growth at low temperatures, that make it well suited for the production of uniform interfaces. Related processes, such...
Nanotechnology research broadly encompasses the exploration of the unique chemical,optical, electronic, or biological properties of materials with dimensions < 1 µm. Inorganic
nanoparticles are one such class of materials, with properties that are exceptionally sensitive to
particle size and structure. This is especially evident in the field of heterogeneous chemical...
This thesis focuses on identifying structure-property-performance relationships in supported nanoparticle catalysts, where an active catalyst material is supported on a high surface area substrate. Identifying these relationships in supported nanoparticle catalysts can be quite challenging, as the complex structure of these catalysts results in numerous potential sources for changes to...