Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team:
Tailored Fluorinated Surfactants for Templating of Ordered Nanoporous Ceramics

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This site describes a Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Researchers in the Rankin and Knutson groups in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department at the University of Kentucky and in the Lehmler group in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa are collaborating to understand how to design fluorinated surfactants so that they will self-assemble with ceramic precursors to make new materials with nanometer-scale pores that have well-defined size, shape, and functionality. The project combines research in small-molecule chemical synthesis, materials synthesis and characterization, supercritical fluid thermodynamics, interfacial engineering, and molecular simulations. To learn more about the project and how we bring these elements together, please follow the menu items on the left. This site describes results obtained in the project sponsored by NSF Grant number DMR-0210517.

News about this project:

• Congratulations to Kaustav Ghosh for successfully defending his Ph.D. in September 2007.
• Congratulations to Gifty Osei-Prempeh for successfully defending her Ph.D. in July 2007.
• Congratulations to Rong Xing for successfully defending his Ph.D. in June 2007.
• Congratulations to Venkat Koganti for successfully defending his Ph.D. in October 2006.
• Congratulations to Bing Tan for successfully defending his Ph.D. in July 2005.
• Gifty Osei-Prempeh, one of the Ph.D. students working on this project, won an outstanding poster award at the 80^th Colloid and Surface Science Symposium in Potsdam, New York in June 2005.
• "Under Pressure" - article about this collaboration in the University of Kentucky Odyssey magazine
• Participants present results at American Institute of Engineers 2003 Annual Meeting