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Undergraduate Student Office: 226 Mason Lab Phone: (203) 436-4059 |
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B.S. in Chemical Engineering, Yale, expected May 2010 I joined the Osuji lab in September 2008 and am originally from Mississippi . Before returning to Yale to finish my degree, I spent two years at Ole Miss .. my interests include polymer self-assembly and structures of complex fluids. Thermoplastic recycling is also a hobby of mine … |
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Since joining the lab, my primary work has been with a system of Sodium Laurate and Poly(vinyl) alcohol in water. Our focus in the lab is measuring the effects of temperature and concentration on these types of systems -aqueous polymer-surfactant complexes, made from common materials. Over the past few months, I've made several attempts to create a stable polymer matrix of PVOH and Sodium Laurate to from a homogeneous gel. But, as of yet, it is very much a work in progress (Figure 1). Most of my difficulties are a result of the tendency of sodium laurate to phase separate in water at low temperatures (Figure 2). It seems this problem can be solved by either raising the temperature of the solution or by increasing the concentration of PVOH, as to lower the concentration of sodium laurate necessary to make a given molar concentration. Currently, I am employing both these techniques simultaneously in the hope of creating gels of varying concentrations, which will then be suitable for the rheometry available here in the lab. |
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Functionalization of Carbon Nanotubes |
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Last summer (2008), I worked with the MRSEC at the University of Southern Mississippi on a project to successfully functionalize carbon nanotubes. Functionalization is the necessary prerequisite for a host of proposed nanotube applications, and our hope was to functionalize the nanotubes sufficiently to allow aqueous RAFT polymerization. Aqueous RAFT (Reversible Addition Fragmentation Chain Transfer) polymerization is a method of aqueous polymerization perfected in the lab of Dr. Charles McCormick at Southern Miss. It can work under diverse reaction conditions and allows the creation of both complex architectures and block copolymers. Our hope was that successful functionalization of the nanotubes would eventually allow us to attach a chain transfer agent (CTA) - necessary to initialize RAFT polymer growth. However, our overall functionalization was minimal and work on the project is ongoing.
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Figure 1: RAFT Polymerization Main Equilibrium |
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Figure 2: Proposed polymerization of functionalized nanotubes with attached CTA (red) |
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Last modified: February 10, 2009