Low-Temperature Plasmas for Chemical and Materials Synthesis
Abstract: Low-temperature plasmas occupy an important and unique regime within the field of plasmas and the broader processing science area. At a basic level, these plasmas are characterized by low (room) temperatures and high electron temperatures. For materials processing, the elevated electron temperatures allow gases to be excited or dissociated to drive chemical reactions, while the low background temperatures avoid heating or damage to the substrate. Low-temperature plasmas have also been formed at atmospheric pressure which allows the treatment of liquids such as water for environmental applications. An emerging area of research is the possibility of carrying out chemical and physical transformations with little to no thermal energy, which is unique to low-temperature plasmas, and presents opportunities for the synthesis of novel materials and chemicals at new processing conditions.
In this talk, we will provide an overview of low-temperature plasmas and some of the recent research directions being pursued. In particular, we will discuss two examples. First, plasmas are being studied for the gas-phase synthesis of nanoparticle materials. An approach termed “plasma aerotaxy”, in which one material is deposited onto another without the presence of a solid substrate, has been developed. Second, plasmas have been formed in contact with a liquid similar to an electrolytic cell. Such a system has been applied to the synthesis of ammonia, a critical commodity chemical, from nitrogen and water
Dr. Necip Uner's Bio: Necip Uner earned his B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University in Turkey in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He received his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2020, where he worked with Prof. Elijah Thimsen on low-temperature plasma synthesis of nanomaterials. He joined Prof. Sankaran’s group at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a postdoctoral researcher in August 2020, where he is currently studying plasma-liquid systems for chemical synthesis.
Professor Sankaran's Bio: R. Mohan Sankaran received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California Los Angeles in 1998 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He began his independent academic career in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. In 2020, he moved to the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently the Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Engineering. His research program focuses on developing atmospheric-pressure plasmas as a chemical platform for the synthesis of novel materials and small molecules with applications in emerging electronics, medicine, and energy conversion.
