Tag: Science

Oregon State University researchers have synthesized new molecules able to quickly capture significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, an important tactic in climate change mitigation.

The study, which focused on titanium peroxides, builds on their earlier research into vanadium peroxides. The research is part of large-scale federal effort to innovate new methods and materials for direct air capture, or DAC, of carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

Findings of the research, led by May Nyman and Karlie Bach of the OSU College of Science, were published today in Chemistry of Materials.

Nyman’s team is exploring how some transition metal complexes can react with air to remove carbon dioxide and convert it to a metal carbonate, similar to what is found in many naturally occurring minerals.

Transition metals are located near the center of the periodic table and their name arises from the transition of electrons from low energy to high energy states and back again, giving rise to distinctive colors.

Facilities that filter carbon dioxide from the air are still in their infancy. Technologies for mitigating carbon dioxide at the point of entry into the atmosphere, such as at power plants, are more mature. Both types of carbon capture will likely be needed if the Earth is to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, the scientists say.

At present there are a combined 18 active direct air capture plants operating in the United States, Canada and Europe, with plans for an additional 130 around the globe. Challenges to direct air capture include big costs and high energy requirements compared to working with industrial exhausts. Additionally, the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide, four parts per million, is low, challenging the performance of carbon capture materials.

“We opted to look into titanium as it’s 100 times cheaper than vanadium, more abundant, more environmentally friendly and already well established in industrial uses,” said Bach, a graduate student in Nyman’s lab. “It also is right next to vanadium on the periodic table, so we hypothesized that the carbon capture behavior could be similar enough to vanadium to be effective.”

Bach, Nyman and the rest of the research team made several new tetraperoxo titanate structures—a titanium atom coordinated with four peroxide groups—that showed varying abilities to scrub carbon dioxide from the air. Tetraperoxo structures tend to be highly reactive because of the peroxide groups, which are potent oxidizing agents.

Related peroxotitanates have been studied for their potential uses in catalysis, environmental chemistry and materials science. However, the tetraperoxotitanates in this study had never been definitively synthesized; Bach was able to use inexpensive materials for high-yield chemical reactions.

“Our favorite carbon capture structure we discovered is potassium tetraperoxo titanate, which is extra unique because it turns out it is also a peroxosolvate,” Bach said. “That means that in addition to having the peroxide bonds to titanium, it also has hydrogen peroxide in the structure, which is what we believe makes it so reactive.”

The measured carbon capture capacity was about 8.5 millimoles carbon dioxide per gram of potassium tetraperoxo titanate—roughly double that of vanadium peroxide.

“Titanium is a cheaper, safer material with a significantly higher capacity,” Bach said.

Named for the titans of Greek mythology, titanium is as strong as steel but much lighter. It’s non-toxic, does not easily corrode and is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust—found in rocks, soil, plants and even the human body in trace amounts.

Other Oregon State authors on the paper included assistant professors Tim Zuehlsdorff and Konstantinos Goulas, postdoctoral researcher Eduard Garrido Ribó, graduate students Jacob Hirschi, Zhiwei Mao and Makenzie Nord and crystallographer Lev Zakharov, interim manager of OSU’s X-Ray Diffraction Facility.

A team of engineers is reimagining one of the essential processes in modern manufacturing. Their goal? To transform how a chemical called acrylonitrile (ACN) is made—not by building world-scale manufacturing sites, but by using smaller-scale, modular reactors that can work if they let the catalyst, in a sense, “breathe.”

Their article, titled “Propene Ammoxidation over an Industrial Bismuth Molybdate-Based Catalyst Using Forced Dynamic Operation,” is published in Applied Catalysis A: General.

ACN is everywhere, from carbon fibers in sports equipment to acrylics in car parts and textiles. Traditionally, producing it requires a continuous, energy-intensive process. But now, researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Houston have shown that by pausing to “inhale” fresh oxygen, a chemical catalyst can produce ACN more efficiently. This discovery could open the door to smaller, versatile production facilities that adapt to fluctuating needs.

William Epling, a professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at UVA, calls the technique “forced dynamic operation,” or FDO. Picture a machine cycling through work and rest periods, using short breaks to recharge and perform at its best.

This is what Epling’s team has done with an industrial bismuth molybdate-based catalyst, alternating between two phases: one containing the full mixture of ingredients needed to make ACN, and another containing only oxygen. This rhythmic approach allows the catalyst to regenerate its lattice oxygen—the source of the key reactant in driving the transformation into ACN.

“FDO is essentially like giving the catalyst a breather, letting it work harder and more effectively in each cycle,” said Zhuoran Gan, a Ph.D. candidate in Epling’s lab. When the catalyst “rests” with just oxygen, it regains strength to tackle the next cycle of production. The results were surprising: ACN production was exceeded by as much as 30% over traditional, continuous methods.

The impact could be transformative. Smaller production facilities that use this method could meet the demand for ACN growth without the need for world-scale, capital-intensive plants. Such facilities could also operate closer to end-users, like manufacturers of high-performance carbon fibers, reducing transportation costs and making production more adaptable.

Epling envisions a future where chemical manufacturing can be more flexible and efficient, with small, scalable production units that meet demand exactly where and when it arises.

The UVA team’s work underscores how sometimes, a catalyst just needs a breath of fresh air to become a powerful tool for innovation.

Yesterday’s polluting fuel could be transformed into a valuable material for tomorrow’s electric vehicle batteries, thanks to a wide-ranging research project that utilizes expertise spanning the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

ORNL researchers created and tested two methods for transforming coal into the scarce mineral graphite, which is used in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage.

The U.S. Geological Survey has classified graphite as a critical material for energy because the domestic supply of natural graphite is so small, and foreign imports are limited. Coal, on the other hand, is both abundant and affordable.

ORNL’s coal-to-graphite project is supported by a diverse team of engineers, materials scientists and computational chemists across the laboratory. Researchers are developing and improving state-of-the-art graphite production processes, verifying their economic viability and scaling them up for manufacturing.

Project lead Edgar Lara-Curzio said the effort provides three key benefits: Enabling wider adoption of electric vehicles to slow climate change impacts; protecting national security by reducing dependence on foreign materials; and bringing economic development to former coal mining communities.

Bishnu Thapaliya, an electrochemist on the research team, said the potential impact is inspiring. “We can pivot from using coal to generate electricity to using coal to enable clean energy technologies, while helping people get back jobs and diversifying the supply chain for industry,” he said.

The University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research partnered with ORNL to prepare and supply pitches, coal and waste coal materials for use in the project.

Industry partner Ramaco Carbon, a subsidiary of Ramaco Resources, Inc. which owns coal mines in Wyoming and Appalachia, supplies coal for the project and is poised to commercialize the technology. “We are encouraged by the progress and breakthroughs we’ve made working with ORNL and are actively reviewing plans to design and build a pilot production facility that we can ramp into larger-scale production,” said Ramaco chairman and CEO Randy Atkins.

The project has rapidly produced a series of significant scientific and engineering advances. First, ORNL researchers optimized a process to heat the coal without oxygen, which prevents burning and transforms it into two major products: gases that can be condensed into coal liquids, and coal char. One branch of the research team invented a method to treat the liquid byproduct before using an existing pressure-spray technique to make fine particles. Meanwhile, colleagues developed a recipe for converting either the particles or the char into graphite inside an electrochemical reactor.

“Lithium and cobalt are two critical minerals in batteries that grab all the headlines, but the biggest material by weight in the EV battery is graphite,” said Eric Wolfe, an engineer leading ORNL’s effort to scale up the electrochemical reactor. “The better the quality of graphite, the better battery you’re going to have. We can’t mine it here in the U.S., but now we can make it.”

The performance and cost are competitive. A preliminary techno-economic analysis concluded the new process could be less expensive than conventional methods of making graphite. Test batteries made using ORNL graphite maintain their capacity after hundreds of cycles almost as effectively as their commercial counterparts.

The ORNL method can even make graphite with waste from coal processing and old mines, creating value while performing environmental restoration. “We are very excited because we have found a way to utilize as much coal waste as possible,” Lara-Curzio said.

Laying the groundwork

ORNL’s electrochemical approach begins with preparing the feedstock by heating coal granules in a process called pyrolysis to produce coal char and coal liquids, while simultaneously analyzing their organic components. A set of researchers led by Thapaliya developed a benchtop electrochemical process for converting these coal byproducts to graphite.

The conventional synthetic graphite approach, named for inventor Edward Goodrich Acheson in the 1890s, relies mostly on extreme heat. In an iron crucible, batches of silica or quartz sand are combined with a powdered carbon material called coke at over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

ORNL’s electrochemical approach creates the graphite from coal byproducts at just 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. The conversion occurs when 2.7 volts are applied into an electrochemical reactor, causing ions to travel through molten salts between electrodes. The method creates no emissions or waste products.

Thapaliya’s team made the graphite into negatively charged electrodes called anodes, which they incorporated into experimental lithium-ion batteries and tested. Experiments with various combinations of voltage, time and salts created the ideal surface area and porosity for ion movement. The researchers found that even coal mining waste, which is full of silica and inorganic materials, can be made into a carbon/graphite composite that works as a battery anode.

To understand the materials at a molecular level, researchers used a comprehensive collection of techniques such as X-ray diffraction, computed tomography or CT scanning, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, small-angled neutron scattering, and examination with high-resolution electron microscopes.

Two pathways

Wolfe brings 30 years of experience in the coal char industry to his job of scaling up Thapaliya’s benchtop graphite process to a larger reactor. Wolfe grinds char into small, round particles, mixes it with a binder and presses the material into cylindrical pellets 36 millimeters across. Pellets are loaded into an electrically conductive cylindrical holder, which is inserted into a chest-high reactor in Wolfe’s lab.

Unlike char, coal liquids require further treatment before entering Wolfe’s reactor. First, they are filtered and then heat-treated to produce pitch, which is dissolved in a solvent. Researchers led by ORNL’s Frederic Vautard adapted an industrial process to spray this mixture through a nozzle. Pressurized air causes the solvent to evaporate while the pitch solidifies into spherical particles which fall into a glass jar.

ORNL computational scientist Stephan Irle and his team developed software to automatically generate 3D molecular models of different types of coals and pitches, and performed large-scale simulations which helped with the selection of the best solvent and with predicting how changes to the process would affect the final product.

Spray-drying eliminates the energy-intensive grinding step for creating uniform, round particles. This shape flows more easily in a liquid slurry during battery manufacturing, and later allows ions to move more easily between electrodes during battery operation. Wolfe said shaping round particles from graphite results in wasting part of the resource.

“The spray-drying method allows us to dictate the particle size without losing valuable material,” Lara-Curzio said. “That is an important innovation because for making lithium-ion batteries, companies want tiny particles of about 20 microns.”

Wolfe continues improving not only graphite quality, but production quantity and speed. He has already scaled up from generating 5 grams of graphite to 500 grams at a time, although the reactor can produce kilograms in each batch. Process improvements are increasing the quantity converted during the reaction.

Wolfe also is working to accelerate production time, which clocks in at 4.5 hours. “Any time we reduce the cycle time, you bring down costs, and that’s the key to bringing this to commercialization,” he said.

Conversion might be happening more quickly already. To find out, the team is awaiting access to an immensely powerful particle accelerator, which generates a light beam that will allow researchers to peer inside the molten salt reaction while it occurs in a test tube. “That’s the key to understanding the mechanism of reorienting the carbon atoms to form graphite and how fast it happens,” Lara-Curzio said.

From research to rollout

While many ORNL experts work to improve graphite production, others are already pivoting to commercialization.

The recent preliminary economic analysis led by ONRL researcher Prashant Nagapurkar confirmed that the electrochemical approach could be scaled up profitably. Based on a factory manufacturing 10,000 tons a year, the new process would cost about 13% less than the cost of the conventional Acheson process, which ranges from $7 to $20 per kilogram.

The study considered the cost of raw materials, labor, energy, equipment, depreciation and more. The ORNL method produces more graphite than the Acheson method for the same amount of wear on equipment because it takes only hours instead of 3 to 6 days.

“In the ORNL process, if the electricity is green, the whole process is green,” Nagapurkar said. “Especially because coal historically has this reputation as ‘dirty,’ a particularly important next step is to track emissions from the entire supply chain through the manufacturing process. This could demonstrate that it is indeed a greener option to manufacture graphite from coal.”

Ramaco’s cooperative research and development agreement with ORNL covers ways to use coal to make a variety of valuable products. The company, founded in 2011, began with the purchase of an older Wyoming mine for coal supplying power plants but also opened new mines in Virginia and West Virginia that produce coke for making steel.

“Our approach has been guided by our mantra that ‘coal is too valuable to burn,’” Atkins said. “We are actively pursuing new technologies that use coal as a feedstock to make advanced carbon products and materials. We view partners like ORNL as critical to providing the research and guideposts for how we can best approach the commercialization process.”

Atkins said Ramaco is already experimenting with making graphite from char in its Wyoming lab and exploring the possibility of manufacturing graphite near its Appalachian mines, an endeavor that would take several years as the company develops procedures to confirm the quality of the product.

Lara-Curzio said ORNL will eventually hold workshops to share the study results with other battery and equipment manufacturers. “We are pursuing translational research that enables scaling up these technologies. Then companies can license them and set up shop in Appalachia or communities that have a very strong connection to coal – not just to make the graphite, but hopefully to make the batteries as well,” he added.

Photosynthesis is one of the most efficient natural processes for converting light energy from the sun into chemical energy vital for life on earth. Proteins called photosystems are critical to this process and are responsible for the conversion of light energy to chemical energy.

Combining one kind of these proteins, called photosystem I (PSI), with platinum nanoparticles, microscopic particles that can perform a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen—a valuable clean energy source—creates a biohybrid catalyst. That is, the light absorbed by PSI drives hydrogen production by the platinum nanoparticle.

In a recent breakthrough, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Yale University have determined the structure of the PSI biohybrid solar fuel catalyst. Building on more than 13 years of research pioneered at Argonne, the team reports the first high-resolution view of a biohybrid structure, using an electron microscopy method called cryo-EM.

The results of the research were published in Nature Communications.

With structural information in hand, this advancement opens the door for researchers to develop biohybrid solar fuel systems with improved performance, which would provide a sustainable alternative to traditional energy sources.

PSI is a large protein complex that is found in plants, algae and photosynthetic bacteria. This protein plays a critical role in capturing and converting sunlight into energy.

Uniquely, PSI is able to very efficiently convert sunlight into energy—for every one photon that is absorbed by the protein, one electron is almost always generated. These electrons can then be transferred to the bound platinum nanoparticles of the biohybrid, which facilitates the production of hydrogen gas.

In earlier work, Argonne chemist Lisa Utschig was able to use PSI to manipulate photosynthesis and produce hydrogen fuel. Now, she and her team have been able to see the structure of the PSI biohybrid in detail. “It’s been really exciting to now directly look at the system we’ve worked at for 13 years,” Utschig said.

Although a few studies have explored the properties of PSI biohybrid catalysts, researchers have not known where the platinum nanoparticles attach to the protein. Using high-resolution cryo-EM, the researchers were able to more thoroughly study the structure of the biohybrid and found exactly where the nanoparticles bind to PSI.

“We assumed the nanoparticles were binding where PSI’s electron transfer partners connect,” Utschig said. “But the structure shows there’s actually two sites. And that was very much a surprise.”

With this structural information, researchers can now begin to optimize how the nanoparticles attach and interact to further enhance catalytic efficiency. They can engineer the biohybrid by altering the protein properties and by adjusting the nanoparticles.

“It’s amazing to see bioenergy at the molecular level and to see how a man-made particle and a natural protein come together to create energy,” said Utschig.

Other contributors to this work include Christopher J. Gisriel, Tirupathi Malavath, Tianyin Qiu, Jan Paul Menzel, Victor S. Batista and Gary W. Brudvig.

Researchers have developed a new aluminosilicate zeolite, ZMQ-1, which features a unique intersecting meso-microporous channel system that is expected to enhance catalytic processes in the petrochemical industry.

The study, published in Nature, highlights ZMQ-1 as the first aluminosilicate zeolite with interconnected intrinsic 28-ring mesopores. This breakthrough overcomes long-standing challenges related to zeolite pore size limitation, stability, and catalytic efficiency.

Zeolites are crystalline materials renowned for their applications in ion exchange, adsorption, and catalysis. However, their microporous structure limits their use in processing larger molecules. Researchers have addressed this limitation by developing a zeolite with intrinsic mesopores—pores larger than 20 Å—while maintaining stability and acidity.

Previous attempts to create mesoporous zeolites faced challenges such as structural instability and reduced acidity, making them unsuitable for industrial applications. However, the newly developed ZMQ-1 has shown the potential to address these issues.

The researchers employed a phosphonium-based organic structure-directing agent (OSDA), which was instrumental in forming the mesoporous framework. Compared to traditional ammonium-based OSDAs, this phosphonium-based OSDA possesses a stronger positive charge and greater stability, enabling the synthesis of stable mesoporous structures.

The crystallization of ZMQ-1 was achieved through hydrothermal synthesis with tunable silicon-to-aluminum (Si/Al) ratios, allowing for customization in specific applications.

“ZMQ-1 is the first aluminosilicate zeolite with an intrinsic meso-microporous channel system,” said co-corresponding author Prof. Lu Peng from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Unlike previously reported mesoporous materials that often lacked structural stability after the removal of organic templates, the interconnected 28-ring channels in ZMQ-1 mark a significant advancement in zeolite design.”

The unique structure of ZMQ-1 was elucidated using three-dimensional electron diffraction (3D ED) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). The analysis revealed that the 28-ring mesopores were interconnected by 10-ring microporous windows, forming an efficient channel system.

This design enables the diffusion of both large and small molecules, addressing the diffusion limitations of traditional zeolites. Consequently, ZMQ-1 proves particularly effective for catalytic cracking of heavy oil.

To evaluate the performance of ZMQ-1, the researchers conducted catalytic cracking experiments with vacuum gasoil (VGO), an essential feedstock in petroleum refining. The results showed that ZMQ-1 achieved a high VGO conversion rate comparable to commercial USY and Beta zeolites. Moreover, it significantly outperformed MCM-41, a well-known mesoporous molecular sieve, in both conversion efficiency and stability.

Notably, phosphorus-containing ZMQ-1 demonstrated twice the selectivity for diesel production and significantly reduced coke formation compared to its commercial counterparts. This combination of higher diesel yield and lower coke generation resulted in an impressive overall fuel selectivity (gasoline and diesel combined) of 80%, a marked improvement over conventional zeolites.

These results highlight the ability of phosphorus-containing ZMQ-1 to efficiently convert heavy hydrocarbons into valuable fuels, leveraging its unique meso-microporous structure to maximize the yield of target products while minimizing undesirable by-products.

With its demonstrated potential in catalytic applications, ZMQ-1 represents a breakthrough in developing more efficient and sustainable chemical processes. By overcoming persistent challenges in zeolite research, such as pore size limitations and structural stability, ZMQ-1 creates new opportunities for applications in heavy oil cracking and green energy conversion.

Detection of nitric oxide (NO) is important for monitoring air quality because the NO released in the combustion of fossil fuels contributes to acid rain and smog. In medicine, NO is an important messenger molecule and serves as a biomarker for asthma.

An international research team now reports a material that can detect NO reversibly, with low power, and with high sensitivity and selectivity: a copper-containing, electrically conducting, two-dimensional metal–organic framework. The findings are published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are latticelike structures consisting of metal “nodes” connected by organic bridges (ligands). An emerging class of MOFs are electrically conducting structures consisting of layers.

These 2D-cMOFs have demonstrated great potential as chemiresistive sensors that react to the presence of specific molecules with a change to their electrical resistance, which may allow for particularly sensitive and low-power detection of toxic gases.

Problems with such systems have included cross-reactivity with a variety of gases and limited reusability due to irreversible binding of the analytes.

Katherine A. Mirica, Christopher H. Hendon, and their team at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH, U.S.), the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR/U.S.), and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea), have now developed a reusable 2D-cMOF for the highly selective detection of NO. They chose to use a 2D-cMOF based on copper and hexaiminobenzene, Cu₃(HIB)₂.

Thanks to their different synthetic strategy (the linker was added as an undissolved powder to a solution of Cu²⁺ ions and potassium acetate), the team produced a material with significantly higher crystallinity (rod-shaped crystallites about 500 nm in length) than has previously been attained.

The crystallites consist of stacked layers of a weblike structure of six-membered rings linked together by copper ions bound to their nitrogen atoms. Spectrometric analyses and computations revealed that the binding sites for NO were Cu-bis(iminobenzosemiquinone) units of the copper-2D-cMOFs. An analogous compound made with nickel instead of copper demonstrated no significant absorption of NO.

Evidently, copper ions with a single positive charge, which are present in small amounts in the structure besides those with a twofold positive charge, play an important role in binding NO. Computational studies suggest that the adsorbed NO significantly distorts the structure, destabilizing the bound state, which is the primary cause for the desirable reversibility of the NO adsorption.

This new sensor material detects NO at room temperature and low voltage (0.1 V) with high sensitivity (detection limit about 1.8 ppb) and could be reused for at least seven cycles without regeneration. Quantitative measurements of NO were also successful in the presence of moisture, and showed high enhancement of sensor signal towards NO in comparison to other gases, such as nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, and carbon monoxide and dioxide.

Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) have developed a surface material that repels water droplets almost completely. Using an entirely innovative process, they changed metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)—artificially designed materials with novel properties—by grafting hydrocarbon chains.

The resulting superhydrophobic (extremely water-repellent) properties are interesting for use as self-cleaning surfaces that need to be robust against environmental influences, such as on automobiles or in architecture. The study was published in the journal Materials Horizons.

MOFs (metal-organic frameworks) are composed of metals and organic linkers that form a network with empty pores resembling a sponge. Their volumetric properties—unfolding two grams of this material would yield the area of a football pitch—make them an interesting material in applications such as gas storage, carbon dioxide separation, or novel medical technologies.

The outer surfaces exposed by these crystalline materials also offer unique characteristics, which the research team took advantage of by grafting hydrocarbon chains onto thin MOF films. They observed a water contact angle of more than 160 degrees—the larger the angle formed by the surface of a water drop with the substrate, the better the hydrophobic properties of the material.

“With our method, we are able to achieve superhydrophobic surfaces with contact angles that are significantly higher than those of other smooth surfaces and coatings,” states Professor Christof Wöll from KIT’s Institute of Functional Interfaces. “Although the wetting properties of MOF powder particles have been explored before, the use of monolithic MOF thin films for this purpose is a groundbreaking concept.”

Next-generation ‘superhydrophobic’ materials

The team attributes these results to the brush-like arrangement (polymer brushes) of the hydrocarbon chains on the MOFs. After being grafted to the MOF materials, they tend to form “coils”—a state of disorder that scientists call “high-entropy state,” which is essential for its hydrophobic properties. The scientists asserted that this state of the grafted hydrocarbon chains could not be observed on other materials.

It is remarkable that the water contact angle did not increase even when they used perfluorinated hydrocarbon chains for grafting, i.e., substituting hydrogen atoms with fluorine. In materials such as Teflon, perfluorination brings about superhydrophobic properties. In the newly developed material, however, it decreased the water contact angle significantly, as the team found out.

Further analyses in computer simulations confirmed that the perfluorinated molecules—in contrast to hydrocarbon chains—could not assume the energetically favorable high-entropy state.

In addition, the scientists varied the surface roughness of their SAM@SURMOF systems in the nanometer range, thereby further reducing the water adhesion strength. Even with extremely small inclination angles, water droplets started rolling off, and their hydrophobic and self-cleaning properties were significantly improved.

“Our work also includes a detailed theoretical analysis, which links the unexpected behavior shown in experiments to the high-entropy state of the molecules grafted to the MOF films,” says Professor Uttam Manna from IITG’s Chemistry department. “This study will change the design and production of next-generation materials with optimum hydrophobic properties.”