WIN Seminar: Recent progress on the development of multi-modal chemical sensors with metal-organic frameworks

Please join the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology on Wednesday, November 6, 2019 for a guest lecture by Seonghwan Kim, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary. He will be speaking on "Recent progress on the development of multi-modal chemical sensors with metal-organic frameworks".

Abstract:

Chemical sensors based on micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS) offer many advantages such as high sensitivity, miniature size, multiple detection, lower sample requirement, and lower power consumption. However, obtaining chemical selectivity in M/NEMS sensors using chemoselective interfaces has been a longstanding challenge. Despite their many advantages, M/NEMS devices relying on chemoselective interfaces do not have sufficient chemical selectivity. Therefore, highly sensitive and selective detection and quantification of chemical molecules using real-time, miniature sensor platforms still remains as a crucial challenge. Incorporating photothermal/photoacoustic infrared (IR) spectroscopic techniques with M/NEMS using quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) can provide the chemical selectivity without sacrificing the sensitivity of the miniaturized sensing system. These techniques have worked well for sticky molecules which have very low vapor pressure or nanoparticulate materials. However, However, selective and sensitive detection of highly volatile molecules at very low concentration is still challenging. To address this challenge, we need some help from chemoselective interfaces or pre-concentrators which have large surface area and partial affinity to target molecules. In this talk, I will present a recent progress on the development of multi-modal chemical sensors exploiting photothermal/photoacoustic IR spectroscopy with metal-organic frameworks.

Biography:

Professor Kim is currently an Associate Professor and Tier II Canada Research Chair in Nano Sensing Systems, in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary (UCalgary). He received his BSc (1998) and MSc (2000) degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea and PhD (2008) in Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA and an Acting Research Associate at the University of Alberta, Canada prior to joining UCalgary. Dr. Kim has founded the Nano/Micro-Sensors and Sensing Systems Laboratory at UCalgary on August 1st 2013 to develop high-performance point/standoff M/NEMS sensors and sensing systems and to explore novel nanoscale imaging/characterization techniques for nanomaterials, polymeric nanocomposites, and microscopic materials related to oil sands industry. Dr. Kim has made significant progress on nanomechanical devices for physical and chemical sensing applications over the last decade.