NOTE: This project is being offered by a Caltech alum and is open only to Caltech students. The project will be conducted at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
Our work spans several topics, and there are projects available in each area. We seek to synthesize and characterize novel materials for energy storage applications with a focus on homogeneity of chemistry and structure in the final product. We begin with carbon as the primary building block, whether for permanently porous scaffold materials or dense graphitic materials, and then seek to make judicious modifications to the carbon network via heteroatom substitution using a wide range of novel solid-state chemical routes. We also carry out investigations of gas-sold interactions at these surfaces, typically under highly non-ideal conditions where the nature of the adsorbed phase is unusual and requires special consideration.
Description:
Synthetic projects involve classic solid-state chemistry techniques: quartz-working, high-temperature reactions, chemical vapor deposition, solvothermal synthesis, Schlenk techniques, etc. Gas adsorption experiments involve utilizing custom high-pressure gas manifolds, cryogenic and heating thermostats, and high-vacuum systems. Theoretical/modeling projects involve the use of Mathematica and/or Python to treat experimental adsorption equilibria and calculate thermodynamic properties in unusual, high-pressure adsorbed phases.
