Restricted Research - Award List, Note/Discussion Page
Fiscal Year: 2023
155 University of North Texas (142043)
Principal Investigator: Li,Xiao
Total Amount of Contract, Award, or Gift (Annual before 2011): $ 110,000
Exceeds $250,000 (Is it flagged?): No
Start and End Dates: 1/1/23 - 8/31/25
Restricted Research: YES
Academic Discipline: Materials Science & Engineer
Department, Center, School, or Institute: College of Engineering
Title of Contract, Award, or Gift: Porous Liquid Crystal Elastomers for Dynamic Oil/Water Separation
Name of Granting or Contracting Agency/Entity:
American Chemical Society
CFDA:
Program Title: none
Note:
Oil/water separation is essential to remove and recover oil from water bodies as the most important part of oil extraction and oil spill response. Traditional porous materials used to remove surface and underwater oil, such as silica aerogels and zeolites, are often not reusable or difficult to recycle the removed oil. Oleophilic foams have recently been developed to overcome these drawbacks and provide high oil absorption and capacity. However, it is inefficient and cumbersome to physically squeeze the foam after each recovery, and limits the depth of oil spills that can be reached underwater. The design and synthesis of materials capable of selectively adsorbing oil from water and subsequently self-releasing the collected oil upon stimulation will significantly rewrite current oil spill response strategies. Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), combined with liquid crystal?s ordered structure and rubber-like elasticity, can respond anisotropically to various external stimuli and be capable to transduce thermal/light energy into reversible mechanical deformation. However, major challenges are how to introduce porous structure into LCE material and manipulate the interfacial chemistry of porous structure to enable superoleophilicity for oil absorption. In this project, we target to synthesize LCEs with controllable porous structure, and use sequential infiltration synthesis to modify the porous surface to be superoleophilicity. We expect to fundamentally understand the self-assembly and phase separation behavior in supramolecular homopolymer and photo-polymerizable liquid crystal monomers, and the surface chemistry for metal precursor-functional group interacting with liquid crystalline polymer materials.
Discussion: No discussion notes