Materials Science Research Lecture
***Refreshments at 3:45pm in Noyes lobby
Abstract:
Diamond, graphite, and the reduced-dimension variants of graphite (graphene, nanotubes, and fullerenes) dominate the discussion of carbon's properties; but there is a missing allotrope! Triply-periodic, negatively curved "schwarzite" remains elusive. In our efforts toward the synthesis of the next carbon nanomaterial, we explore a class of materials with schwarzite-adjacent structures, obtained via high-fidelity carbon replication of the pore network of a zeolite template. Such materials have extensive edge structure, resembling a periodic array of functionalized graphene nanoribbons, separated at a distance of ~1 nm. Several interesting properties of this model class of carbonaceous solids will be presented: ideal binding of methane for room temperature delivery, unusually low bulk modulus, high density of unpaired spins, exceptional isotropic electrical conductivity, and remarkably tunable coefficient of thermal expansion.
More about the Speaker:
Nicholas P. Stadie received a B.S. in chemistry from Arizona State University where he performed research on zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) under Prof. Michael O'Keeffe. At the California Institute of Technology, he undertook studies of high-surface-area carbonaceous adsorbents and their gas storage properties under Prof. Brent Fultz, receiving a Ph.D. in materials science in 2012 (officially, 2013). His attention turned to reactive, unstable porous phases of hydrogen-rich materials such as magnesium borohydride under Prof. Andreas Züttel at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science & Technology (Empa). After a second postdoctoral position at ETH Zürich applying porous carbon materials as exotic battery electrodes in the laboratory of Prof. Maksym Kovalenko, he returned to North America in 2017 and is now an associate professor at Montana State University. His research interests combine synthetic solid-state chemistry with experimental studies of gas− and ion-surface interactions.