Postdoctoral Associate

Office: 226 Mason Lab

Phone: (203) 436-4059
   

Since May 2013, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University, School of Engineering & Applied Science, Department of Chemical Engineering.

May 2013: Ph.D., Department of Chemical Engineering, Drexel University

May 2007: M.S. in Biotechnology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology

Sept 2004: B.S. in Chemical Engineering , Department of Chemical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

I am currently co-advised by Profs. Chinedum Osuji and Menachem Elimelech. The main two projects that I am actively working on are:

1. Membrane fabrication for a closed-loop Osmotic heat Engine

2. Ionic transport in block copolymers

Engineering thin film composite and hydrophobic micropoous membranes has been among my research objectives during my stay at Yale University. I have successfully designed and implemented methods to enhance membrane porformance for the desired applications - pressure retarded osmosis and membrane distillation.

Figure 1. Hydrophobic membrane with different surface properties and suitbale for membrane distillation fabricated in a simple one step phase inversion process. By controlling the phase inversion parameters memabrane with different surface porosity and wettability was obtained.(Scale bars are 10 and 2 micro meter in left and right respectively.)

I am also interested in ionic transport in polymeric materials and developing fundamental understanding of structure-conductitivy corrolations in these systems. My current and past research interests, centered around energy storage devices, motivate me to study the polymeric ion conducting materials as they are potential candidates for integration into lithium ion batteries for enhanced performance and longevity.

Figure 2. Conductivty of a a PS-PEO block copolymer near its order-disorder transition temperature.( The red and blue color represent heating and cooling waves, respectively).

Past research has mostly dealt with in-situ polymerization using a unique polymer CVD technique. I have developed oxidative polymerizaiton of conjugated polymers using a variety of Lewis acid compounds. I focused on polythiophenes and pioneered oxidative chemistry of conjugated polymers using chlorinated metalloids and high valence transitional metal oxidants. I have also been active in device fabrication for both energy convesrion and storage. My dissertation is entilted "Oxidative and Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition of Polymer Electronic Materials for Applications in Energy Conversion and Storage"

Figure 3. Orgnaic-inorganic solar cells fabricated using a liquid-free polymer CVD process.

 

  1. Nejati, S.; Boo, C.; Osuji, C. O. and Elimelech, M. “Engineered Poly(Vinylidene Fluoride) Membrane for Membrane Distillation” Journal of Membrane Science 2015 accepted.
  2. Nejati, S.; Patel, A;WallowitchG. R. and Lau, K. K. S., Electrical Conductivity and Stability of oCVD Copolymer Thin Films of Thiophene and Pyrrole. Nanoscience and Nanotechnology letters 2015 7 (1) 50-55.
  3. Spurgeon et al. “Polarization screening-induced magnetic phase gradients at complex oxide interfaces” Nature Communications 2015 6 (6735)
  4. Smolin, Y. Y.; Nejati, S.; Bavarian, M.; Lau, K. K.S.; Lee, D; and Soroush M., “Effects of Polymer Chemistry on Polymer-Electrolyte Dye Sensitized Solar Cell Performance” Journal of Power Sources 2015 274, 156-164
  5. Azoz,S.; Marquez, A.; Exarhos, A.; Gilbertson, L. P.; Nejati, S.; Cha, J. C.; Zimmerman, J. B.; Kikkawa, J.; and Pfefferle, L. D. Langmuir, 2015, 31 (3), 1155–1163.
  6. Nejati, S.; Minford, T.; Smolin, Y. Y. and Lau, K. K. S., “Enhanced Charge Storage of Ultrathin Polythiophene Films within Porous Nanostructures”. ACS Nano 2014 8 (6), 5413–5422.
  7. Xiaokai, L.; Jing-Shun, H.; Nejati, S.;  Guard, L. G.;  Osuji, O. C.; Hazari, N. and Taylor, A. D. Nano letters 2014 14 (11), 6179-6184.
  8. Lin, S.; Nejati, S.; Boo, C.; Hu, Y.; Osuji, C. O. and Elimelech, M. “Omniphobic Membrane for Robust Membrane Distillation” Environmental science and Technology 2014 1 (11), 443-447.
  9. Kaufman, G.; Boltyanskiy, R.; Nejati, S.; Dufresne, E. and Osuji, C. O., “Single-step microfluidic fabrication of soft polyelectrolyte microcapsules by interfacial complexation.” Lab on chip 2014 14, 3494-3497
  10. Feng, X.; Tousley, M. E.; Cowan, M. G.; Wiesenauer, B. R.; Nejati, S.; Choo, Y.; Noble, R. D., Elimelech, M.; Gin, D. L. and Osuji, C. O. “Scalable Fabrication of Polymer Membranes with Vertically Aligned 1-nm Pores by Magnetic Field Directed Self-Assembly” ACS Nano 2014, 8 (12),  11977–11986.
  11. Spurgeon, S. R.; Sloppy, J. D.; Winkler, C. R.; Jablonski, M.; Nejati, S.; Jambunathan, K.; Damodaran, A. R.; Idrobo, J. C.; Lau, K. K. S.; Lofland, E.; Martin, L. W.;  and Taheri, M. L.  “Substrate-Controlled Strain and Polarization Effects on Magnetization and Curie Temperature in LSMO / PZT Thin Film Oxide Heterostructures”, ACS Nano 2014 8 (1), 894-903.
  12. Ben-Sasson, M.; Lu, X.; Bar-Zeev, E.; Zodrow, K.R.; Nejati, S.; Qi, G., Giannelis E.P.; and Elimelech, M. “In situ formation of silver nanoparticles on thin-film composite reverse osmosis membranes for biofouling mitigation.” Water Research 2014 62, 260-270.
  13. Bavarian, M.; Nejati, S.; Lau, K. K.S.; Lee, D; and Soroush M., “Effects of Critical Dye Sensitized Solar Cell Parameters on Cell Performance: a Theoretical Study” I&EC 2013 53 (13), 5234-5247.
  14. Bose, R.; Nejati, S.; Stufflet, D. and K. K. S. Lau “Grafted Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) Anti-fouling Surfaces using Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (iCVD)”, Macromolecules 2012  45 (17), 6915–6922.
  15. Nejati, S. and K. K. S. Lau “Pore Filling of Nanostructured Electrodes in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells by Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition”, Nano letters 2011 11 (2), 419–423.

  16. Nejati, S. and K. K. S. Lau “Chemical Vapor Deposition Synthesis of Tunable Unsubstituted Polythiophene”, Langmuir 2011 27(24), 15223-15229.

  17. Nejati, S. and K. K. S. Lau “Integration of polymer electrolytes in dye sensitized solar cells by initiated chemical vapor deposition”, Thin Solid Film 2011 519(14), 4151-4155.
  18. Alemzadeh, I and Nejati, S. “Phenols removal by immobilized horseradish peroxidase” Journal of Hazardous Materials 2010 166(2-3), 1082-1086.

  19. Afsahi, B.; Kazemi, A.; Kheirolomoom, A. and Nejati, S. “Immobilization of cellulase on non-porous ultrafine silica particels” Scientica Iranica 2007 14(4), 379-383.