Tanya Hutter
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Engineering·Early-career
Porous materials that can soak up gases are used in air purification, carbon capture, gas sensors, gas separation and catalysis. Temperature controls how strongly these materials take up (adsorb) and release (desorb) gas.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Chemistry
- Topics
gas sorption
adsorption
desorption
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Develop methods to embed porous gas-adsorbing materials inside 3D microstructured silicon substrates with high thermal conductivity, and characterize how the adsorbent interacts with the substrate surface.
- Determine how the amount and distribution of adsorbent, and the micron-sized features of the substrate, affect heat distribution and gas adsorption and desorption.
- Demonstrate the thermally controlled 3D sorbent architectures in practical gas sensing, gas storage and separation of complex gas mixtures.
More about the research
Precise heating could therefore make them work much better. Most of these materials, however, conduct heat poorly, so they are hard to heat quickly and evenly. This project addresses that problem by embedding gas-adsorbing materials inside three-dimensional (3D) microstructured substrates, such as silicon, that conduct heat very well.
Why it matters
Better thermal control of gas-adsorbing materials could improve devices for gas sensing, gas storage, air purification and separating gas mixtures. It could also benefit carbon capture, which could help address climate change. Engineers designing sorbent-based components and sensors could gain design principles that make these devices faster to heat, more efficient and more precise.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Muhammad Sahimi
University of Southern California, CA·Engineering
Characterize the intermolecular attractions that permit low-energy CO2 release from Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticle composites under an external magnetic field, probing how far the field perturbs electron transfer using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and density functional theory.
Xinpeng Zhao
Michigan State University, MI·Materials Science
Establish how moisture changes heat flow in cellulose-based porous materials by making samples with controlled fiber sizes and pore structures and measuring their thermal conductivity across humidity levels.
Seokjhin Kim
Oklahoma State University, OK·Engineering
Determine how catalytic atomic layer deposition heals molecular-scale defects in zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) membranes, monitored in real time during gas separation testing.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
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