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Our
research is motivated by the need to understand at a molecular
level the fabrication and functions of new catalysts, adsorbents,
optoelectronic materials, porous ceramics, heterogeneous polymers,
and biominerals. These broad categories of technologically important
materials are linked by their crucial dependencies on local order/disorder,
which often governs macroscopic process or device performance.
We are broadly interested in heterogeneous solids, whose sizable
variations in local ordering and dynamics have pronounced influences
on the adsorption, reaction, optical, or mechanical properties
of these materials. Through development and application of state-of-the-art
techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, we
observe many common molecular features among these diverse systems,
which provide new insights and design intuition for our materials
chemistry and engineering objectives. We benefit from close collaborative
research relationships with a number of industrial partners and
foreign laboratories.
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