Ciência Sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders) s1

Ciência sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders) DCU PhD Project Template:

**Please use one form per project**

Please complete & submit to [email protected] by Friday 13 th July

PI name & contact details: Dr. Aoife Morrin

School: Chemical Sciences

Has project been agreed with head (or Yes nominee) of proposed registration school? Research Centre / group National Centre for Sensor Research affiliation:

Research group / centre www.ncsr.ie website:

PI website / link to CV: http://www.dcu.ie/info/staff_member.php? id_no=1342 Brief summary of PI research / research group / centre activity (2 or 3 lines max): Development of electroanalytical platforms based on conducting polymers and other functional materials. Successes to date has been in the development of printable conducting polymer inks aswell as adding a nanostructured dimension to these materials to address challenges relating to sensor fabrication and sensitivity aswell as probe conducting polymer interactions with large biomolecules for chromatographic applications. Sample Publications: 1. Smith, P.J., Morrin, A. (2012). Reactive Inkjet Printing. Invited Highlight Article in J. Mater. Chem., 22(22): 10965-10970. 2. Gorey, B., Galineau, J., Smyth, M.R., White, B., Morrin, A. (2012). Inverse-opal conducting polymer monoliths in microfluidic channels. Electroanal., 24(6):1318-1323. Title & brief description of PhD project (suitable for publication on web): Conducting polymers as electroactive materials for chromatographic applications Columns housing inert stationary phase monoliths will be modified to behave as thin-layer electrochemical cells to permit commercially-viable, electrochemically-responsive liquid chromatography (LC). This will enable electroactive coatings on stationary phases to be addressed electrochemically. Various modes of chromatographic interaction using electroactive coatings will be studied, including reversed- and normal-phase and ion-exchange, which are viable as the properties (hydrophobicity, ionic capacity, porosity) of the proposed coatings are tunable electrochemically. Electroactive coatings will allow for improved separations in terms of selectivity and efficiency, to be demonstrated for peptides and proteins. Ultimately, it will allow Capillary-Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry/Mass Spectrometry to be realised for pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries. Image above: (a) Au nanoparticle coating and (b) polypyrrole coatings on lauryl methacrylate stationary phase monoliths. Unique selling points of PhD project in DCU: DCU projects should offer something that’s not available in Brazil – specific equipment, multi-disciplinarity, aspects of structured programme, links with industry, placements, links with other research groups etc. This project will give the post-graduate the opportunity to combine the disciplines of electrochemistry and chromatography to develop a new separations principle capable of offering industrially-relevant solutions for the separation and identification of increasingly complex biological mixtures, e.g. biopharmaceuticals. The project will be run in collaboration with Dr. Damian Connolly (DCU) who is a lead PI in the Irish Separations Science Cluster (ISSC) (www.irishseparationscience.ie), a cluster within Ireland with the capabilities to attempt to address the diverse needs and requirements of the pharma- and bio-pharma industries. The ISSC has substantial and multi-faceted support from both separations companies (technology providers) and pharma/bio-pharma industries (technology users). There is also a significantly large network of international collaborators (leading separations groups in USA, Europe and Australia). Materials science will play a major role in this project where coatings will be developed based on electroactive polymer (nano)materials. State-of-the-art characterisation tools used in this project will include FE-SEM, TEM, particle sizing, BET analysis, contactless conductivity, electrochemistry and chromatography.

Name & contact details for project queries, if different from PI named above:

Please indicate the graduates of which disciplines that should apply: Chemistry Materials Science/Physics

Ciência sem Fronteiras / Science Without Borders Priority Area: Please indicate the specific programme priority area under which the proposed PhD project fits- choose only one (tick box): Engineering and other technological areas Pure and Natural Sciences (e.g. mathematics, physics, chemistry) Health and Biomedical Sciences Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Aerospace Pharmaceuticals Oil, Gas and Coal Renewable Energy Minerals Biotechnology Nanotechnology and New Materials X Technology of prevention and remediation of natural disasters Biodiversity and Bioprospection Marine Sciences Creative Industry New technologies in constructive engineering

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