Page 9 - CEMS News Winter 2021

FACULTY NEWS
Faculty awards
Chris Ellison and Bharat Jalan
phase to a paraelectric phase upon heating. As the crystal
is cooled through the phase transformation it releases (latent) heat, transforms to
the ferroelectric phase, and develops a strong polarization. If this crystal is the dielectric of a capacitor that is connected in parallel to a reference capacitor, it will draw charge from the reference capacitor. Besides the exciting long
Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s College of Science & Engineering were recently named recipients of the 2020 TechConnect Business Innovation Awards for their work on novel technologies.
CEMS Professor Chris
Ellison and his research
team in the Center for Sustainable Polymers (CSP) at the University of Minnesota (UMN) won a TechConnect
Bharat Jalan
Professor Mahesh Mahanthappa has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) upon the recommendation of the APS Division of Polymer Physics (DPOLY). The number of APS Fellows elected each year is limited to no more
than one half of one percent
of the membership. It is a prestigious recognition of outstanding contributions to physics. Mahanthappa is being honored “for fundamental
Chris Ellison
term possibility of using these
devices to produce energy from
the enormous natural reserves stored on earth at small temperature difference, the near term application of this technology is the conversion of waste heat-to-electricity from the industrial sector, internal combustion engines, power plants, data centers, computers, and hand-held electronic devices.
Innovation Award for developing a new recycling approach to address one of the world’s most pressing problems: recycling mixed plastic waste. Their approach has targeted poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polyethylene (PE) mixed waste, which together constitute roughly 50% of the total plastics market. The team developed PET-PE multiblock copolymers (MBCP) that can be used as interfacially-active compatibilizers to produce melt reprocessed PET/PE blends. At only a few percent loading, the MBCP additive improved PET/PE interfacial adhesion by almost three orders of magnitude, and this aided in stress transfer across interfaces to produce tough blends that are useful for numerous applications. These exciting results indicate MBCPs can efficiently function as compatibilizer additives to facilitate the recycling of multicomponent plastic waste by simple melt reprocessing.
A research team led by Distinguished McKnight University Professor Richard James, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, and CEMS Professor Bharat Jalan earned a TechConnect Innovation Award for developing a new concept for energy conversion from low-grade waste heat to electricity. The technology relies on the use of oxide crystals that undergo highly reversible phase transformations from a strongly ferroelectric
Mahesh Mahanthappa
Mahesh Mahanthappa
and illuminating studies of self-assembly across multiple length-scales.”
Visit the CEMS website to see more news: www.cems.umn.edu
CEMSnews Winter 2021 9