CAREER: Integrating Research and Education via Low-Temperature Solventless Formation of Hierarchical Porous-on-Porous Materials

该学院早期职业发展（CAREER）拨款为开发一种新技术提供资金，该技术将功能性多孔聚合物存款到多孔材料上，以开发用于疾病检测的微流体设备和用于水净化的多功能过滤膜。本研究的主要目的是确定与使用显着降低的基板温度，以同时冻结和固化单体，导致形成新的多孔材料的机制和动力学。研究方法是系统地评估工艺参数对孔径分布的影响，研究未加盖和加盖膜的形成，确定局部冷却是否可以控制x，y和z方向上的孔形成，并利用控制这些膜的对称性，表面化学和结构的新发现的含义来创造创新，如果成功，这项研究的结果将导致对聚合物膜低温沉积相关的化学和物理的基本理解，并最终制造下一代诊断设备和净化膜。一系列的动手示范将被开发出来，以点燃洛杉矶市中心的中学生对工程领域的兴趣，这些中学生很少接触到这些话题。将通过将女学生与女教师配对来创建一个新的多层次导师计划，以促进职业发展并帮助提高妇女在工程领域的保留率。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant provides funding for the development of a new technique to deposit functional porous polymers onto porous materials in order to develop microfluidic devices for disease detection and multifunctional filtration membranes for water purification. The primary objective of this research is to determine the mechanism and kinetics associated with using significantly reduced substrate temperatures in order to simultaneously freeze and polymerize monomer, leading to the formation of novel porous-on-porous materials. The research approach is to systematically evaluate the effects of process parameters on the pore size distribution, investigate the formation of both uncapped and capped membranes, determine whether localized cooling can control pore formation in the x, y, and z-directions, and utilize the new-found implications of controlling the symmetry, surface chemistry, and structure of these membranes to create innovative, real-world multifunctional porous-on-porous materials.If successful, the results of this research will lead to a fundamental understanding of the chemistry and physics associated with low-temperature deposition of polymer membranes, and ultimately the fabrication of next-generation diagnostic devices and purification membranes. A series of hands-on demonstrations will be developed to ignite interest in engineering fields among middle school students in downtown Los Angeles that rarely have access to such topics. A new multi-tiered mentorship program will be created by pairing female students with female faculty in order to foster career development and help improve the retention of women in engineering fields.