Marissa Giovino

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | RPI · Department of Materials Science and Engineering

It is demonstrated that the addition of nanoparticles can decrease the viscosity of an entangled polymer matrix (plasticization). While there has been considerable effort in understanding the role of bare nanoparticles on viscosity, the corresponding study on grafted particles is nascent. Two nanometer radius zirconia fillers with a bimodal populat...

Polymer nanocomposites have improved mechanical, optical and thermal properties compared to traditional thermoplastics. To study the impact of grafted brush–matrix interactions on the mechanical properties of nanoparticle filled polymers, uniaxial tensile testing with digital image correlation (DIC) was done on polystyrene (PS) grafted SiO2 in low...

Polymer nanocomposites with polymer grafted nanoparticles (NPs) are of great interest since they have improved properties relative to their unfilled analogs. While it is well-appreciated that nanocomposite flow behavior is critically affected by filler dispersion, the roles of the matrix and the polymeric grafts remain unexplored. We perform linear...

Expanding into application: covalent organic framework (COF) films are ideally suited for vertical charge transport and serve as precursors of ordered heterojunctions. Their pores, however, were previously too small to accommodate continuous networks of complementary electron acceptors. Four phthalocyanine COFs with increased pore size well into th...

Three boronate ester-linked covalent organic frameworks (COFs) were synthesized using a new approach that employs polyfunctional boronic acid and acetonide-protected catechol reactants in the presence of the Lewis acid catalyst BF3·OEt2. This transformation avoids the use of unstable and insoluble polyfunctional catechols. The COF-5 and COF-10 hexa...