IMX Seminar Series - Polymers, Particles and Printing: Architecting Soft Matter for Energy Management

The Pentzer group uses fundamental polymer chemistry and emulsions to prepare composite structures and establish structure-function-application relationships. Emulsions are biphasic systems in which droplets of one liquid (e.g., an oil) are dispersed in a continuous phase of another (e.g., water). These phase-separated systems provide an ideal platform for the synthesis of composites of disparate materials, including liquid-filled capsules, highly porous polymers coated with inorganic particles, and feedstocks for 3D printing. The Pentzer group developed 2D particles as surfactants for different fluid-fluid interfaces, including oil-water, oil-oil, and ionic liquid-oil, and combines the high interfacial area with simple polymerization approachs to fabricate hybrid structures.
This presentation will describe the production of capsules with core of ionic liquid or phase change material and their use in CO2 uptake and thermal energy management, respectively. Additionally, the presentation will detail the integration of reactive bonds into the capsule shell to support capsule fusion upon printing, and the use of transition metal carbide nanosheets (i.e., MXenes) as surfactants to produce composite films for electromagnetic interference shielding.

Bio: Emily Pentzer is an Associate Professor in the department of chemistry and the department of materials science and engineering at Texas A&M University. She received a BS in chemistry from Butler University (2005) and PhD in chemistry from Northwestern University (2010), where her thesis focused on preparing and polymerizing unsaturated lactones and lactams. She then worked with Professor Todd Emrick in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at UMass Amherst where she focused on the synthesis and assembly of electronically active materials for organic photovoltaics. In 2013, Dr. Pentzer started her independent career as an assistant professor of chemistry at Case Western Reserve University and she moved to Texas A&M in 2019.
The Pentzer Lab’s research centers on developing new polymeric materials and assemblies as a route to understand structure-property-application relationships and access functions not possible with current state-of-the-art systems. Her group works on the encapsulation of “active” liquids and gases, designing and synthesizing new polymer chemistries, and developing feedstocks for additive manufacturing to produce multifunctional materials, and these materials have applications in thermal energy management, electrochemical energy storage, and carbon capture.
Dr. Pentzer regularly participates in events aimed at professional development of students and post-docs and facilitating their transition to vibrant STEM careers. She has received several awards including the NSF CAREER award (2016), PMSE Young Investigator Award (2017), CWRU Faculty Diversity Excellence Award (2019), ACS WCC Rising Star Award (2021), and was named a Texas A&M Presidential Impact Fellow (2021) and finalist for the Blavatnik Award in physical sciences and engineering (2022). She served as an Associate Editor for Polymer Chemistry from 2015-2023 and served as Alternate Councilor for the Polymer Division (POLY) of the American Chemical Society from 2020-2022. She currently serves as the inaugural Editor in Chief of RSC Applied Polymers (2023-present).