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...
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...
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...
At its core, the purpose of microscopy is to make objects and their underlying structures visible under high magnification. With the remarkable progress of electron microscopy, the sub-micron “high” magnification of light microscopy has been completely refashioned to encompass subatomic length scales. Unfortunately, higher-magnification does little to negate existing interpretability...
Plasmonic nanoparticles have very large absorption cross sections and can concentrate the local density of photon states on the nano scale. When they are coupled to molecules or semiconductor nanocrystals and form different hybrid nanostructures, various light-matter interaction processes can be significantly enhanced or manipulated, including optical responses like fluorescence...
Electrochemical devices play a vital role in the efforts towards a sustainable green future. Solid acid based electrochemical cells, employing super protonic CsH2PO4 (CDP) as the electrolyte component, offer unique application advantages due to their operability at intermediate temperatures 250°C. At these temperatures, one can achieve improved reaction kinetics over...
Nanocarriers are drug delivery vehicles that have at least one dimension at the nanoscale (10-9 m). Engineering the nanocarrier surface is a strategy for targeting drug delivery to specific cell types to enhance efficacy and minimize side effects. A useful analogy is to consider how the chassis of an automotive...
Semiconductor nanocrystals possess unique photophysical properties that make them desirable for many optoelectronic applications such as photovoltaics, LEDs, and quantum computing. When the size of a semiconductor is reduced to below the excitonic Bohr radius of the material, its carriers becomes quantum confined resulting in drastic changes to optical, electronic,...
Materials science has been central to human advancement since time immemorial. There has always been curiosity around studying the processes required to extract materials, examine their structure, and ultimately tailor their properties to meet human needs. Over the last few centuries, the ability to tailor material properties was driven by...