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Workshop / Seminar

Chemistry Departmental Seminar – Dorina F. Sava Gallis, Ph.D.

Online
Please contact Sarah Oesch Miller for Zoom details.

About the event

Speaker: Dorina F. Sava Gallis, Ph.D., Principal Member of Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM

Title: Exploring the Design Space in Highly Tunable Metal-Organic Frameworks Materials Platforms

Abstract: Owing to their incredibly rich chemistry and highly tailorable structural features, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) emerged as unique materials candidates to address a wide range of scientific and societal needs. In this talk I will provide a brief overview of a few multidisciplinary projects our team has worked on in recent years. First, I will discuss recent advancements into using MOFs as highly tunable platforms for biological applications. Highlights include the demonstration of two distinct synthetic pathways for the successful conjugation of antibodies on MOFs. This development is highly relevant for use in a wide variety of assays and as novel targeted imaging agents for biological/medical imaging. Next, I will discuss our focus on expanding the MOFs nanomaterials repertoire for biological applications. While MOFs, and in particular zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), are typically biocompatible and diverse in structure and chemistry, there has been a lack of exploration for biological applications beyond the prototypical ZIF-8. We demonstrate a methodology to tailor the particle size in structurally complex ZIFs, emphasizing the importance in controlling the rates of nucleation and growth to create size tunable nanoparticles. Last, I will briefly discuss our powerful design strategies towards the creation of next-generation optical tags. To impart both intricacy and security, we implement synergistic approaches to result in both overt and covert properties, with concomitant multi-emissive spectra and highly tunable luminescence lifetimes. Multilevel tag authentication is validated with a variety of orthogonal detection methodologies, showing the utility of these tag materials in facile interrogation, yet complex encoding, both accessible for widespread use and secure against counterfeiters.

This work is supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525.

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