Principal Investigator Zachary Smith
Polymers are a unique platform of materials for the formation of membranes. Organic chemistry provides a toolbox for designing and synthesizing complex polymer structures, and these long-chain molecules can be formed into strong and ductile thin films (~100 nm). The ability to control chemical structure and engineer the way polymer chains pack together allow us to design membranes that selectively permeate small molecules based on sub-angstrom differences in size and subtle differences between molecule-polymer interactions. We seek to develop a molecular level understanding of these polymer membrane systems to target applications related to energy and the environment, such as reducing energy costs in wasteful industrial processes and capturing CO2 emitted from the smokestacks of a coal-fired power plants.