Polymer Science Doctoral Student Wins GRFP Fellowship Award

UMASS Amherst, April 2013.  The STEM Diversity Institute  congratulates  Daniel Acevado Cartagena, a doctoal student in the department of Polymer Science, on winning a prestigious  2013 NSF-funded Graduate Research Fellowhsip (GRFP)  to study solution state assembly of building blocks for photovoltaic devices. The experimental approach involves the solution state assembly of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) into crystalline nanofibril structures by a reduction on the solubility of the polymer. His research shows that the fibers form smaller nanowires by sonication and nucleate further growth by adding aliquots of dissolved P3HT. Mr. Acevado Cartagena's  work emphasizes developing a fundamental understanding of these assembly processes, and the hierarchical assembly of these building blocks into more interesting structures like electron donor-acceptor segmented nanowires. It is hypothesized that these approaches will provide thermally stable morphologies that offer both excellent charge transport and efficient charge separation, thus providing useful device structures for photovoltaics.