Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Our lab has been focusing on research and development of high value-added fine chemicals such as pharmaceutically important compounds, high performance molecules for electric and electronic devices, cosmetic ingredients, high explosive materials, and other functionally specified target compounds based on the organic synthetic methodology and technology. Another area of interest in our lab is development of novel stereoselective methods for asymmetric synthesis of organic compounds with biologically activity as well as chirality. It is our hope that we can design and prepare the target compounds with various functionalities based on better understanding of fundamental principles and knowledge on chemical reactivity and selectivity of molecules.

Our research focuses on the fabrication of organic functional nanomaterials and their versatile use in energy, electronic, environmental, and biomedical applications. In particular, we are interested in several disciplines related to the following areas:

Nanomaterials & Nanoelectronics / Organic Field-Effect Transistors / Organic Solar Cells / Graphene and CNT / Chem/Bio Sensors

The Polymer Chemistry lab is devoted to synthesis, characterization of novel polymers, and understanding polymer chemistry. Our efforts are aimed at applying these technologies for many possible applications, such as biological, environmental technologies, fuel cell, redox flow batteries, lithium ion batteries, and high-performance polymers. A variety of new polymers, their derivatives, and new polymer composite materials, for example, liquid crystalline polyoxyethylenes, antimicrobial polymers having acrylate backbone structures, polymer electrolytes for lithium ion batteries containing Peg or organic/inorganic hybrid moieties, polythiophene-based conducting and light emitting polymers, polybenzimidazole and poly(arylene ether sulfone) derivatives for fuel cell membranes, fluorinated and zwitterionic polymers having antifouling properties, and high performance nanocomposites containing carbon nanomaterials including graphene moieties, were prepared through various synthetic and processing approaches. Through these studies on chemistry, synthesis, and applications of polymers, we would like to contribute to the advances in the science and technologies in chemical engineering.

Our research area can be divided as the fabrication of polymer nanomaterials and the environmentally friendly applications such as chemical sensor, biosensor, catalyst, heavy metal removal, antimicrobial reaction, etc. For the fabrication of nanomaterials, we have experience and techniques such as soft templated polymerization, vapor deposition polymerization, interfacial polymerization, dispersion polymerization and electro-spinning methods. Our group possess an excellent ability to synthesize conducting polymer nanomaterials with the various morphologies. In addition, they are superior to the surface modification of these nanomaterials for the environmentally friendly applications using chemical treatments.

Our research activities focus on understanding the relationships between molecular structure and physical properties in polymeric materials and the utilization of this knowledge to engineer polymeric materials on microscopic and macroscopic levels for use in functional and high-performance engineering applications. The polymeric system we are investigating includes new engineering plastics, polymer blends, and nanocomposites: the properties we concern for applications range from bioactive, conducting to thermomechanical properties.

Our group aims to develop organic synthetic methodologies for biologically active molecules by using nanoscale heterogeneous catalysts and applying them for various biological applications. Currently, our work focuses on the following fields:

Photocatalysis; Tandem catalysis; Protein modification; MRI contrast agents; Nano drug delivery system; Nano-biosensor; Drug discovery