This Nanotechnology in Undergraduate Education (NUE) award to Michigan State University supports a team of four faculty led by Dr. K. Jayaraman, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, to develop a new undergraduate laboratory experiment on transport properties of polymer nanocomposites with layered materials and a related web-based interactive teaching/learning module on the subject designed for sophomores. The new experiment will be added to an existing laboratory course titled Composite Materials Processing offered every year to juniors and seniors from chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science. Undergraduate students in the course will investigate the mean particle aspect ratio, the polymer crystallinity, the diffusivity of gases and the electrical impedance in chosen nanocomposite specimens prepared with nanoscopically thin, silicate layers and expanded graphite in several polymers. Selected undergraduate students will be recruited as summer interns to work with the faculty on this project.
The web-based module will have three components - a virtual experiment on the permeability of layered silicate nanocomposites, a basic description of how electrically conductive nanolayers achieve conduction in a polymer nanocomposite; and a description of packaging applications including green nanocomposites based on sustainable polymers. The interactive web-based module will be combined with lectures in an undergraduate course on Plastics Packaging taken by 120 students. A total of up to 200 undergraduate students per year will be impacted by this development at Michigan State University alone.
The proposal for this award was received in response to the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Education announcement, NSF 03-044, category NUE and was funded by the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) in the Directorate for Engineering.
