Elemental Analysis Instrument for Characterizing Advanced Polymeric Materials, Nanostructures, and Composites

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Accurate measurement of the chemical composition of new materials is absolutely essential for developing new technologies based on those materials. However, for materials like membranes, hydrogels, nanomaterials, or fibrous materials intensively studied by the co-applicants' groups, the most common characterization techniques are unsuitable due to the lack of material solubility (making nuclear magnetic resonance challenging or impossible), the need to probe bulk and not just surface compositions (making x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy unsuitable), the high molecular weights (making high resolution mass spectrometry infeasible), and/or the need to detect light elements with high precision (making inductively coupled plasma-based techniques inapplicable). Combustion-based elemental analysis (EA) is the only method available to gain quantitative information on the bulk chemistry of such materials and is widely acknowledged to be a core analytical instrument within a materials science and engineering laboratory. However, since a failing 12-year old instrument was decommissioned in 2015, there is no available EA instrument at McMaster or even in Hamilton. This has required the co-applicants to instead use contract labs that have provided very high-cost, slow, and at times inaccessible service, making what should be a routine analysis in most cases infeasible. Furthermore, HQP have no hands-on opportunity to learn how to use a standard analytical instrument within diverse areas including bulk chemicals, pharmaceuticals, catalysis, environmental analysis, plastics, and biomaterials, a key gap in our HQP training, and have had both publications and graduations delayed waiting for EA data to arrive. As such, this proposal requests funding for the purchase of a new CHNS/O elemental analysis instrument that will meet these heavy research and training demands. The broad need for EA analysis capacity is illustrated by the diversity of research challenges represented among the co-applicants, including the characterization of: (1) the density of crosslinking and/or bioactive grafts in tissue engineering scaffolds; (2) the composition of self-assembled structures and drug loadings in nanoscale drug delivery vehicles; (3) the chemistry of biofilms and anti-fouling surfaces suppressing biofilm growth; (4) the heteroatom doping levels of carbon-based materials for energy and catalysis; (5) the composition of pulp fibres and hydrogels designed to increase agricultural yields; (6) the functional group content of modified membranes and monoliths for environmental remediation and (7) the organic content of sustainable and recyclable silicone rubbers, among other applications emerging from ongoing collaborative research activities both within and beyond the co-applicant team. The lack of timely and affordable access to EA will substantially delay research progress on these technologies that address current and emerging economic opportunities in Canada.