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Mechelle Kitchings, Administrative Manager
404-894-1746
Summary Sentence: Join Materials Science and Engineering as they present Mark Losego, Assistant Professor in the School of Material Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Full Summary: No summary paragraph submitted.
Mark LosegoMark Losego, Assistant Professor
Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract:
Vapor phase infiltration (VPI) is a new processing technology for infusing polymers with inorganic constituents to create unique organic-inorganic hybrid materials with novel chemical, electrical, optical, and physical properties. These new materials have been used in applications ranging from energy harvesting to filtration media to photolithographic hard masks. This talk will focus on our experimental and theoretical development of a fundamental phenomenological model to measure and describe the VPI processing kinetics and create a pathway for rational design of material composition and structure. By measuring VPI compositional profiles as a function of position, time, and temperature, we can extract fundamental energy barriers for the sorption, diffusion, and reaction processes and delineate amongst different rate limiting steps. In our materials development, we often find that partial infiltration of a polymer film, fiber, or foam is sufficient to impart desired properties; so rational design of the infiltration kinetics can enable desired performance without waste in processing time or materials. Here, we will demonstrate several examples including our work to create chemically insoluble polymers and membranes. We find, for example, that infiltration depths of about 0.75 microns are sufficient to yield PMMA chemically insoluble in organic solvents regardless of whether it is in a thin film geometry or a macroscopic plexiglass object of centimeters in dimension. We are also applying similar methods to microporous polymer membranes to make them insoluble and resistant to swelling in aggressive organic solvents to further expand membrane-based chemical separations technology.
Biography:
Mark D. Losego is an Assistant Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Losego Lab focuses on materials processing and develops novel organic-inorganic hybrid materials systems for sustainable energy, national security, and technical textile applications. The Losego Lab combines a unique set of solution and vapor phase processing methods to convert organic polymers into organic-inorganic hybrid materials, including developing the science to scale these processes for manufacturing. Prof. Losego has over 70 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific journals, and his thermoelectric textile technology has been externally licensed by Thermo-Flex Technologies for commercial development. Prof. Losego received his B.S. degree from Penn State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, all in materials science. Prior to joining the materials science and engineering faculty at Georgia Tech in 2014, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois and a research faculty member in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.
