Materials Science Research Lecture

***Refreshments at 3:45pm in Noyes lobby

Abstract:

Vapor phase infiltration (VPI) is a new processing technology that exposes polymers to metalorganic vapor species that sorb into the bulk of the polymer to create organic-inorganic hybrids with novel chemical, electronic, optical, and mechanical properties. These new materials have been used in applications ranging from energy harvesting to chemical separation membranes to photolithographic hard masks. This talk will explore our current understanding of the final organic-inorganic hybrid structure and our use of electron microscopy, spectroscopy, and density functional theory (DFT) to understand the inorganic's chemical state and its bonding structure to the polymer and how this structure affects the hybrid's physical properties. Several example structure-property relationships will be discussed including the chemical solubility and glass transition temperature of the hybrid materials and the development of new photocatalysts created by infiltrating catalytic inorganic metal oxide clusters into optical light absorbing conductive polymers.

More about the Speaker:

Mark D. Losego is an Associate Professor and the Dean's Education Innovation Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech. The Losego Lab focuses on materials processing and developing novel organic-inorganic hybrid materials for sustainable energy, national security, and technical textile applications. Research largely focuses on the use of vapor phase processes to make and modify materials (e.g., atomic layer deposition [ALD], vapor phase infiltration [VPI], and physical vapor deposition [PVD]), with particular interest in understanding how to scale these processes for manufacturing. Prof. Losego has over 120 peer-reviewed publications and 2 awarded patents. He has been recognized with multiple awards including the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award and Georgia Tech's Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. He is also the faculty founder for The Materials Innovation and Learning Laboratory (The MILL), an open-access, student-run make-and-measure space for experiential education in materials science (https://mill.mse.gatech.edu). Prof. Losego received his B.S. degree from Penn State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, all in materials science and engineering. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2014, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois and research faculty in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.