A materials synthesis technique was recently developed to generate polymer/nanoparticles composite microcapsules in which synthetic polyamines such as polyallylamine and/or polylysine were crosslinked with multivalent anions to form polymer-salt aggregates, that then served as templates for deposition of nanoparticles (NPs) of various compositions ...

Bimetallic palladium-gold (PdAu) nanoparticle (NP) catalysts have been demonstrated for the better catalytic performance than monometallic Pd catalysts in various reactions; however, the enhancement mechanism is not completely clear for most reactions. This thesis addresses the investigation of PdAu NP catalysts with emphasis on the structureproper ...

This work considers the effect of shear on the thermal conductivity of non-Newtonian fluids. These fluids display a variation of viscosity as a function of shear rate, and this study determines whether the thermal conductivity has a similar variation for these fluids. The experimental apparatus consisted of concentric cylinders immersed in a ...

The focus of this thesis was conducting experiments which would help in understanding mechanisms and in design of surfactant enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes in various scenarios close to reservoir conditions such as heterogeneity, effects of crude oil, wettability, etc. Foam generated in situ by surfactant alternating gas injection was demonstrated ...

High temperature synthesis of nanocrystals in non-polar solvents typically produces materials with narrow size distribution and high yields. However, the mechanism leading to the preservation of monodispersity on depletion of monomers is not understood, for example, in the case of iron oxide nanoparticles. In our study, it was found that oleic acid, ...

Governments want to replace fossil fuels with biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel due to concerns about pollution and price instability. However, the biodiesel industry must find a market for glycerol to be profitable. The large quantities and reduced state of its carbon have made glycerol an attractive choice for ethanol production. While Escherichia ...

The purpose of this work is two-fold: (1) to develop a novel mathematical and computational framework that incorporates the major sources of cell population heterogeneity and (2) to use this framework to demonstrate the effect of stochasticity on cell population heterogeneity in an artificial lac operon genetic network. During the past decades, ...

Understanding the expression patterns of simple, synthetic gene regulatory networks will not only shed light into the complexity of naturally occurring networks, but it will also provide a platform for expression control that can be valuable in biotechnological applications. The expression of regulatory networks is influenced by the fact that the ...

Accurate prediction of the thermodynamics and microstructure of complex fluids is contingent upon a model's ability to capture the molecular architecture and the specific intermolecular and intramolecular interactions that govern fluid behavior. This dissertation makes key contributions to improving the understanding and molecular modeling of complex ...