CAREER: Development and Application of Crumpled Graphene Oxide-Based Nanocomposites as a Platform Material for Advanced Water Treatment

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1454656FortnerCAREER: Development and Application of Crumpled Graphene Oxide-Based Nanocomposites as a Platform Material for Advanced Water TreatmentWater is critical to sustainability in the 21st Century. There are numerous aspects to water sustainability with one of those being development of new treatment processes which utilize new materials. This CAREER proposal directly benefits society as it will provide fundamental scientific understanding and information to help address the critical, global need for continued development of novel and advanced water treatment technologies. The PI will broadly disseminate project related scientific results through publication in peer-reviewed journals, presentation at conferences, and through the organization of symposiums at national meetings of the American Chemical Society. Additionally, this project incorporates a five year, comprehensive educational and outreach plan, which is designed to 1.) provide unique educational opportunities for an estimated 500 students in the St. Louis region, including over 450, 6-12th grade students; 2.) create specific and hands-on, project related, research opportunities for numerous undergraduate researchers (20-30 students); and 3.) directly support two Ph.D. students.Technically, this project aims to systematically engineer, fundamentally characterize and broadly demonstrate 3D, crumpled graphene oxide platform composites for improved performance and, in some cases, enabling innovative (re)design strategies for advanced water treatment technologies. This project is highly novel and timely in that engineered, nanocomposite crumpled graphene oxide materials have, to date, not been evaluated as platform materials for advanced, aqueous based photocatalysis or as multifunctional membrane components, despite distinct material/engineering advantages, including: intrinsic porosities, highly tailorable photocatalytic and magnetic properties, tunable (carbon) surface chemistry and physical size/shape regimes, high aqueous and chemical stabilities, and scalable production routes. The fundamental nature of this work will not only directly support and inform the next generation of 3D graphene based composite structures for environmental applications but will also serve a wide range of researchers focused on engineering (curved) carbon-based nanostructures for advanced sensing, catalysts, photovoltaics, antifouling/antimicrobial surfaces, among other applied materials.