Nano for cleaner air, curing disease, more
In addition to the NIRT grant for the collaboration with MIT, Cornell and DuPont, Lehigh this year received one other NIRT grant and two one-year awards through NSF's Nanoscale Exploratory Research (NER) program.
Israel Wachs, professor of chemical engineering, received a four-year NIRT grant to study using nanocatalysis to convert NOx from power plants into nitrogen and water, to reduce NOx from car engines and to turn NOx and SOx from petroleum refineries into harmless substances. Wachs won the Clean Air Excellence Award from EPA in 2002 for a process that converts pollution from paper pulp mills into formaldehyde and other useful products.
James Gilchrist, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and Chris Kiely, professor of materials science and engineering, received an NER grant to develop an adhesive that self-assembles into nanowires as it cures. They are seeking to send electronic pulses through a solution of metallic nanoparticles and an adhesive or polymer, causing the nanoparticles to line up in a particle-by-particle chain. One goal is to improve fabrication techniques for nano- and microfluidic devices while lowering particle content of adhesives.
Filbert Bartoli, chair of electrical and computer engineering, and Svetlana Tatic-Lucic, assistant professor in the department, received an NER grant to create ordered arrays of nerve cells by culturing them in chains along nanochannels. The cells could be probed to analyze the effects of various agents, enabling better therapies for neurodiseases and improved biosensing capabilities and applications.
|  Tatic-Lucic creates ordered arrays of nerve cells |
