Abstract
Stimuli-responsive materials hold promise for enabling the fabrication of portable chemical sensors and microelectronic devices with the goal of improving human health, safety, and quality of life. This presentation will describe the molecular design and synthesis of stimuli-responsive materials for targeted deployment in mobile chemical sensors and microelectronic devices. The first part of the presentation will focus on describing several approaches for integrating conductive metal-organic frameworks into portable device architectures, and utility of these devices in electronic gas sensing. The second part of this presentation will introduce a novel approach to designing materials for temporary adhesion, which relies on the use of sublimable organic compounds, with promising utility in the fabrication of microelectronic devices.
Biography
Katherine Mirica received her B.S. degree at Boston College, where she developed a passion for Materials Chemistry, working in the laboratory of Lawrence T. Scott. She graduated with high honors in 2004, and later that year moved across the river to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University. In 2011, Katherine earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University under the guidance of George M. Whitesides. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the development and characterization of a simple and portable method that used magnetic levitation for density-based chemical analysis. She also contributed to several other research efforts in the areas of paper-based diagnostics and protein biophysics. Katherine then joined the laboratory of Timothy M. Swager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an NIH postdoctoral fellow to pursue the development of portable electronic carbon-based chemical sensors for the detection of hazardous gases and vapors. At MIT, she developed a solvent-free approach, operationally analogous to drawing with pencil on paper, for the fabrication of sensitive and selective sensors from carbon nanomaterials. Katherine began her independent scientific career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College in July 2015.