Bruker AXS has announced the recipient of its 2007 Excellence in X-ray Diffraction (XRD) scholarship - based on unique experiments performed by university students
Recognising academic achievement in advanced XRD, Bruker AXS presented its US$6000 scholarship for the most unique application in the field of materials research to PhD student Michelene Miller at Alfred University, for her research paper 'Novel processing of microporous glass-ceramics for gas separation'.
Miller is advised by Scott Misture, professor of materials science at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, NY.
"Using high temperature XRD, we determined that nickel-doped cordierite glass-ceramics are candidates for application as permeability-controlled microporous membranes to separate out carbon dioxide and hydrogen gases in fossil fuel power plants, both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating hydrogen," explains Miller.
Misture's group studies the dynamic behavior of oxide ceramics and glasses related to energy conversion devices.
Projects generally rely on detailed in-situ characterisation using X-rays and neutrons to understand the relationships between structure and properties.
Their recent work has focused on the effects of atmosphere and humidity on structure, phase stability, and conductivity at high temperature.
Their current research focuses on materials for solid oxide fuel cells and hydrogen production.
Funded by the NSF, DOE, EPA, and other agencies, their work centers on solid oxide fuel cells and photocatalysts.
This year's runner-up is PhD student Qian Zhang from the University of Montreal.
His research paper is entitled 'A simple XRD setup to track in situ the evolution of structural order in polymer liquid crystals exposed to solvent vapour'.
Qian Zhang's research concentrates on physical and optical studies of azo-surfactomesogen/polyelectrolyte complexes.
He is advised by Professor Geraldine Bazuin of the University of Montreal's department of chemistry.
Bazuin's research concentrates on the development of novel supramolecular and nanostructured polymeric materials.
"Our particular areas of interest include liquid crystalline materials, block copolymers, blends, ionomers, nanopatterns on surfaces, ultrathin films, and applications in optoelectronics and gene delivery," indicates Bazuin.
The scholarship winner and runner-up have been selected by an independent panel of judges: Tom Blanton from Eastman Kodak; Jim Kaduk from Innovene, and current board chairman of the International Centre for Diffraction Data; Pam Whitfield from National Research Council Canada; Jim Britten from McMaster University; and Nattamai Bhuvanesh, department of chemistry at Texas A+M University.
"We are pleased again this year to provide a Bruker XRD scholarship to another extraordinary student," says Uwe Preckwinkel, Bruker AXS XRD sales and marketing manager.
"Both Bruker AXS and the judges are most impressed by the quality of the XRD experiments all these future X-ray scientists have performed, and the valuable scientific results they have obtained," adds Frank Burgaezy, executive vice president of Bruker AXS in charge of the company's global XRD and XRF business.
