Title: Persistent Micelle Templates Reveal Nanoscale Cause-and-Effect
Abstract: Few aspects are as prevalent and important to energy conversion and storage as the dimension control of porous nanomaterial architectures. The study of nanostructure-property-performance relationships has been broadly limited by access to well-defined nanomaterials with independent control over the pore and wall dimensions. This historic limitation is partially due to reliance upon equilibrating self-assembly processes that obscure nanostructure cause-and-effect since the resulting sample series convolve multiple spatial variables. Persistent micelle templates (PMT) are a recent nanofabrication platform based upon kinetic micelle control where the pore diameter and wall thickness are independently tailored.1 This approach enables investigations “one-variable at a time” with seamless access from meso-to-macroporous materials and a remarkable ~2 Å precision of size tuning. Recent energy device research2,3 enabled by PMT will be presented where these nanomaterials provide a unique perspective. For example, PMT-materials were the first used to reveal the diffusive rate limiting process for intercalation pseudocapacitance in T-Nb2O5. These data supported the critical re-evaluation of prevailing perspectives about the nature of intercalation pseudocapacitance. Our corresponding new model deconvolves how synthetic choices affect both surface and bulk processes and furthermore explain the long-standing “blurry” continuum between capacitor-like and battery-like behaviors.2
Bio: Morgan Stefik is a Full Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina and is the founding director of the South Carolina SAXS Collaborative. He completed a BE degree in Materials Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 2005, a PhD degree in Materials Science from Cornell University in 2010, and postdoctoral research at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne until 2013. His accolades include a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2018, a Breakthrough Star Award from the University of South Carolina in 2018, election to the council of the International Mesostructured Materials Association in 2018, selection as an ACS PMSE division Young Investigator in 2020, and a Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Fellowship in 2022. His publications have been highlighted with 15 journal covers as well as invitations to special early-career editions of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A in 2017, the Journal of Materials Research in 2022, and Soft Matter in 2022. His teaching has also been recognized with a Garnet Apple Award for Teaching Innovation in 2022 and the Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2023.
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