Materials Chemistry

Stony Brook has an extremely diverse program within this research area. Groups within the Department of Chemistry are actively involved in research programs that include the characterization of polymer structure, design of molecular solids, synthesis of new solid state materials, and the study of catalyst structure and mechanisms, battery materials, gels, polydiacetylenes and polytriacetylenes, supercritical fluids and nanostructures. Critical to the success of these programs is the availability of modern, state-of-the-art instrumentation for structure elucidation of both crystalline and amorphous materials. Stony Brook is extremely well equipped to conduct such research, with 2 single crystal diffractometers and 3 wide bore NMR machines in the Department of Chemistry, and powder diffractometers, microscopes (SEM, TEM, and AFM), high pressure cells for synthesis, etc. available on campus. Scattering experiments, designed to probe polymer properties such as crystallization, gelation and micellization are performed in-house, and at synchrotron sources such as the NSLS or the Advanced Photon Source (at Argonne National Laboratory), where dedicated instruments are available. Although there are no formal requirements for research in this area, many students opt to take relevant courses in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Department of Geosciences.


	Christian Aponte-Rivera IDEA Fellow Lecturer. Soft materials, such as polymers and colloids, have a wide array of technological applications and are central to our understanding of biological systems and diseases. My research work focuses on utilizing computational and theoretical tools to predict the properties of soft materials.
	Surita R. Bhatia Professor. Structure and rheology of soft materials and complex fluids, including colloidal dispersions and polymeric hydrogels.
	Karena Chapman Professor
	Robert Grubbs Associate Professor. My research group is interested in the common ground shared by polymer, organic, and materials chemistry and we are involved in the design, synthesis, and characterization of polymer-based organic materials.
	Benjamin S. Hsiao Distinguished Professor. Fundamentals of structure, morphology, property and processing relationships in polymers; nanocomposites and biomaterials. Discovery of sustainable nanomaterials for water purification.
	Peter Khalifah Assistant Professor. Materials chemistry; designing functionality into crystalline solids using elemental substitution and structural control to fine-tune the energy levels of bulk materials.
	Benjamin G. Levine IACS Endowed Professor of Chemistry. Joint with the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. Theory and Simulation of Electronically Excited Molecules and Materials.
	Amy Marschilok Associate Professor. Materials science and engineering; inorganic chemistry; interfacial electrochemistry; batteries, flow cells, capacitors, liquid and solid electrolytes
	John Parise Professor. Crystallography; mineral physics.
	Esther Takeuchi Distinguished Professor. Materials chemistry, physics and engineering; systems based electrochemistry; batteries, flow cells, capacitors, liquid and solid electrolytes
	Kenneth Takeuchi Distinguished Teaching Professor. Inorganic chemistry; materials science and engineering; electrochemistry; batteries, flow cells, capacitors, liquid and solid electrolytes
	Stanislaus S. Wong Distinguished Professor. Synthesis and characterization of chemically functionalized nanomaterials (including carbon nanotubes and quantum dots) and one-dimensional nanostructures. Physical, chemical, and biological applications of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Biophysical chemistry. Surface chemistry and reactivity. Optical spectroscopy. Probe and electron microscopies.

Faculty