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THE SCHOOL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
on Tuesday, May 8, 2018
10:30 AM
in MoSE 3201A
will be held the
DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEFENSE
for
Nikolay S. Semenikhin
" Synthesis and Properties of Metallized Cellulose Nanomaterials"
Committee Members:
Dr. Kenneth H. Sandhage, Advisor, MSE
Dr. Robert J. Moon, MSE
Dr. Joseph W. Perry, CHEM
Dr. John Zhang, CHEM
Dr. Bernard J. Kippelen, ECE
Dr. Michael A. Filler, ChBE
Abstract:
With increasing concerns about pollution, climate change, and general wellbeing consumers are increasingly demanding products be made with bio-renewable materials. Industry is responding to these demands by shifting towards the use of sustainable and environmentally benign materials in their products. This shift presents multiple challenges as many of today’s products require specialty high performance materials that cannot be easily substituted.
To address such challenges, researchers have recently turned their attention to renewable and sustainable cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) as potential building blocks for a wide range of products including specialty packaging, flexible electronics, adhesives/coatings, filtration/barrier systems, tissue engineering etc. However, there are several roadblocks that must be overcome before CNC-based products become ubiquitous in the market place. Three areas in need of significant effort are identified in the Agenda 2020 nanocellulose roadmap and include: economical production/drying methods, characterization of morphology/size, and exploring new applications for CNCs.
The proposed research intends to contribute in the areas of characterization and new applications for CNCs by developing a scalable wet-chemical coating process to create hybrid metallic/organic nanoparticles, which could be used as functional constituents in novel CNC-based products and who’s size/shape dependent optical properties can be used for particle morphology/size analysis. The first portion of this proposal lays out the approach for creating chemically modified CNCs having colloidal stability and an affinity for metallic nanoparticles. The second portion focuses on developing electroless deposition methods for depositing thin, conformal and continuous metal coatings onto modified CNC surfaces. Lastly, the effect of particle composition, morphology, and size on the physical properties (optical, electrical, and magnetic) will be investigated to develop an understanding of the structure-property relationships in these hybrid materials.
