Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Asst. Prof. Lara Estroff receives a Faculty Early CAREER award for her project, "Synthesis, Characterization, and Application of Gel-Grown, Polymer-Reinforced Single Crystals."

The project focuses on recent observations, both in Nature and in the laboratory, of macroscopic, single crystals with incorporated polymer fibers and other macromolecules. The project aims to understand the mechanisms by which these polymer networks become incorporated into macroscopic, single crystals. The ability to make a variety of single crystals that contain well-controlled distributions of organic polymers or pores, will lead to a new class of composite materials with interesting structure-property relationships and potential applications ranging from structural biomaterials to new formulations of pharmaceutical drugs to materials for energy generation and storage.