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OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH ACHIEVEMENTS AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
By Dr. Benny D. Freeman
Our research focuses on polymers and polymer-based composite materials, with particular emphasis on the transport of small molecules in polymers, which finds applications in areas such as gas separations, liquid separations, water purification, barrier packaging, etc.
Our group is organized around three broad topics: gas separations, liquid separations, and barrier materials. There are approximately fifteen Ph.D. students in the research group, and our research is supported by a variety of federal, state, industrial sponsors.
Recently, our research efforts have focused on: (1) nanocomposites, where the addition of very small (in the nanometer size range) particles to polymers can cause major changes in their transport and separation properties, (2) coating and surface modification of water purification membranes to reduce fouling, and (3) reactive materials for barrier packaging. In each of these research programs, we combine fundamental polymer science, polymer synthesis, and advanced characterization methods to develop an understanding of the structure of materials we study and their performance properties for the applications of interest.
We have strong collaborations with fundamental chemistry programs in the US and abroad and with engineering and materials science characterization groups around the world. Students graduating from our program typically have opportunities to continue their studies in the US or abroad, if they wish, or have access to a variety of job opportunities in the US. Our group contains mainly Chemical Engineering students; we also have collaborations with faculty in the Departments of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, the Department of Petroleum and Geosciences Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas. The group is primarily Chemical Engineering students, but we also have students from Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering in the group, so it provides a multidisciplinary environment with a wide variety of expertise and experience in many different aspects of fundamental polymer science, polymer characterization, and polymer chemistry. .
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