Collaborative Research: EAGER: Interaction of carbon-metal nanohybrids at environmental interfaces

工程纳米材料（NMs）代表了各种各样的极小颗粒（100纳米），广泛应用于能源、电子和传感等工业部门。由于这些应用要求更高的性能，材料研究领域已经将其重点从单一的NMs（仅碳，仅金属）转移到由几种不同类型的NMs连接在一起，称为纳米杂化（NHs）。以这种方式连接单个NMs可能会在环境和生物环境中创造新的特性和行为，这些特性和行为尚未被预测或研究。随着氮化氢利用规模的迅速增加，它们在水生环境中存在的机会可能很大。因此，这项工作的目标是积极地识别当前与燃料电池行业相关的碳-金属NHs的新颖和未预料到的特性和相关行为。这些研究将首次调查将单一NMs组合成NHs是否会改变它们在环境中的行为方式以及与水生生物的相互作用。通过开发两种或两种以上纳米级材料的集成来提取新特性是几个行业的新兴趋势。然而，我们关于纳米环境行为的大部分知识仅限于单一成分的被动纳米结构（例如碳，金属）。我们假设NHs将显示出新的不可预见的特性，这些特性在驱动其在环境矩阵和生物体中的行为方面非常重要。为了解决这一问题，我们提出了以下目标：(1)合成一组具有高度控制的金属-碳纳米管NHs，目标是调节能带结构和材料刚度；(2)表征纳米管的物理形态、机械刚度、带隙、金属/金属氧化物的分布；(3)通过研究粒子-粒子和粒子-收集器的相互作用，以及在广泛的环境条件下测定粒子的溶解，来研究NH与环境界面的相互作用；(4)利用完善的水生模型，结合线粒体功能障碍和氧化应激的高通量当代测量，评估NHs在生物界面上的行为和相互作用。这项工作是创新的，因为它是第一个执行一套NHs和组件材料的受控合成和表征，将在水生环境和模式生物（鱼）中进行研究。这项工作是及时的，因为它将为进一步研究在复杂但相关的环境中理解NHs奠定基础，并揭示生物系统中尚未研究的新特性和作用机制。拟议的工作将产生关键的和基础的知识，以更好地理解一组复杂的分层纳米材料，金属-碳质NHs的环境相互作用。这些NHs与不断扩大的燃料电池行业高度相关；因此，这项工作的结果将直接影响材料科学和纳米社区，并帮助公众了解纳米环境研究。在外联和教育方面，pi将通过德克萨斯大学和佛罗里达大学的几个成熟的项目招募本科生研究人员，包括代表性不足的学生，如工程本科生毕业生联系项目（GLUE）、德克萨斯研究经验（TREX）项目、佛罗里达-乔治亚少数民族参与联盟（FGAMP-SEAGEP）和霍华德休斯医学研究所（HHMI）的生命科学项目招募少数民族学生。

Engineered nanomaterials (NMs) represent a diverse class of extremely small particles ( 100nm) that are being widely used in industrial sectors such as energy, electronics, and sensing. As these applications demanded higher performance, the field of materials research has shifted its focus from using singular NMs (carbon only, metal only) to those comprised of several distinct types of NMs linked together, termed nanohybrids (NHs). Linking single NMs in this capacity is likely to create new properties and behavior in environmental and biological settings that have not yet been predicted or studied. As the scale of NH use rapidly increases there is likely to be significant opportunity for their presence in the aquatic environment. Therefore, the goal of this proposed work is to proactively identify novel and unanticipated properties and associated behavior of carbon-metal NHs that have current relevance to the fuel cell industry. These studies would be the first to investigate whether combining singular NMs to form NHs alters the way they behave in the environment and interact with aquatic organisms. Extracting novel properties by developing ensembles of two or more nano-scale materials is an emerging trend in several industries. However, most of our knowledge regarding nano-environmental behavior is limited to passive nanostructures with singular composition (e.g. carbon, metal). We hypothesize that NHs will display novel unforeseen properties that are highly important in driving their behavior in environmental matrices and organisms. To address this notion we propose to carry out the following aims: (1) synthesize a set of metal-carbon nanotube NHs with high degree of control with the objective of tuning band architecture and material stiffness; (2) characterize physical morphology, mechanical stiffness, band gap, distribution of metal/metal oxides on nanotubes; (3) examine NH interaction with the environmental interfaces by studying particle-particle and particle-collector interaction as well as determining particle dissolution in a wide range of environmental conditions; (4) assess behavior and interaction of NHs at biological interfaces using a well-established aquatic model coupled with high-throughput contemporary measurements of mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress. This work is innovative in that it is the first to execute controlled synthesis and characterization of a suite of NHs and component materials that will be investigated in aquatic environments and model organisms (fish). This work is timely in that it will lay the foundation for further research in understanding NHs in complex but relevant environments and reveal novel properties and mechanisms of action in biological systems that have not been studied. The proposed work will generate critical and fundamental knowledge to better understand the environmental interaction of a set of complex hierarchical nanomaterials, metal-carbonaceous NHs. These NHs are highly relevant to the expanding fuel cell industry; therefore, results of this work would directly influence materials science and nano communities and help inform the general public about nano-environmental research. In outreach and education aspects the PIs will recruit undergraduate researchers, including underrepresented students, through several well established programs at UT and UF such as Graduates Linked with Undergraduates in Engineering (GLUE) program, Texas Research Experience (TREX) program, Florida-Georgia Alliance for Minority Participation (FGAMP-SEAGEP) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Science for Life programs to recruit minority students.