Matthew Green
Chemical engineering Assistant Professor Matthew Green was presented with the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) Young Membrane Scientist Award at the 2016 NAMS conference.
“I was extremely honored to win this award,” Green says. “The NAMS community is very friendly, but they are very critical and demanding scientifically. I was pleased that the community valued my contributions and selected me as the award winner.”
The NAMS Young Membrane Scientist Award is given annually to up to three post-docs and faculty at the beginning of their professional careers in membrane science and technology. Recipients are given $500, a one-year membership to NAMS, and free registration to the NAMS Annual Meeting, where they give an oral presentation.
Green presented his work on the design of ionomer block polymers as battery electrolytes and electromechanical transducers.
“My work was focused on optimizing the conductivity of ionomer membranes, which is important for energy storage and harvesting devices,” Green says.
He and his lab identified design constraints important for designing conductive membranes, determined what would maximize ionic conductivity, and developed a synthetic protocol to prepare triblock copolymers with tunable mechanical properties and ionic conductivity.
“Then we prepared membranes and demonstrated their utility as electromechanical transducers, or materials that convert electrical energy into mechanical energy,” Green says. “These are an exciting class of materials that can use the shape memory characteristics of polymers to change shape in response to an electric current (think Batman cape).”
His NAMS Annual Meeting oral presentation also discussed future endeavors of his lab at ASU.
“We are building on these findings and we are applying the materials to water treatment membranes,” Green says. “The presentation was well received and some of the questions gave me ideas for future directions we can explore.”
