If you want to increase your cars gas mileage or build a more powerful handheld electronic device, dont bend steel or slice silicon chips. Manipulate nanomaterials and molecules instead.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, two University researchers will pursue more efficient methods of energy transmission and storage that involve maneuvering microscopic particles. Tina Salguero and Gary Douberly, assistant professors of chemistry in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will each receive $750,000 for five years from the DOEs Office of Science Early Career Research Program for energy-related projects.

Gary Douberly

This is tremendous news that continues the very strong performance of the chemistry faculty in recent years, said UGA President Michael F. Adams. At a time when this country faces serious questions about the future of its energy supply, research focused on energy efficiency is a national priority. I am proud that Drs. Salguero and Douberly are being supported by the Department of Energy in their groundbreaking research.

Salguero will focus on increasing the energy capacity for compact electrical devices while Douberly looks to new technologies to improve fuel efficiency.

Tina Salguero

Our efforts will develop the first synthetic methods for creating these types of nanosheets, and the characterization studies will show whether they retain their important dielectric properties, she said.

Salguero plans to develop methodologies for preparing ceramics in nanosheet form and to gauge their properties. She will also test two ways to process the nanosheets-first via inkjet printing of liquid crystalline nanosheets and second by mechanically assembling alternating layers of conducting and non-conducting materials to build up dense, hybrid nanosheet structures capable of greater energy storage.

Devices using this technology would have an energy density far exceeding anything possible today, Salguero said. Ceramic nanosheets could enable technological wonders like handheld high-power lasers and mobile electromagnetic launchers.

Douberly will use his funding to capture short-lived molecules and free radicals-highly reactive molecules-that arise during engine ignition. He will use a method called helium nanodroplet isolation to hold molecule groups-or species-that form for brief moments during combustion. Douberly will capture the molecules inside drops of super-cooled liquid helium and subject them to infrared laser spectroscopy to determine their molecular structure and their unique combinations of electromagnetic radiation wavelengths, or spectroscopic signatures.

Read more here:
UGA chemistry professors awarded $1.5 million to conduct energy-related research