This grant will provide funds for the purchase of a modern FT-IR spectrometer system for the Chemical Engineering Department at North Carolina State University. The equipment will support a variety of projects in polymer science and engineering including characterization of gas-polymer interaction in novel, highly selective polymeric membrane materials and the effect of copolymer sequencing distribution on barrier properties of thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers. The research projects associated with this equipment award should help to improve the application of polymers in the industrial and commercial separation of gases and for other purposes.
