Professor Bradley F. Chmelka

Phone: 805-893 3673, Fax: 805-893 4731

E-mail: bradc@engineering.ucsb.edu

Materials Research: Molecular Sieves (Zeolites), Polymer Structure and Dynamics, Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Materials, and NMR Spectroscopy.

Professor Chmelka graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University in 1982 with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. From 1982 to 1984 he worked as a startup engineer with Unocal Corporation at the Parachute Creek Shale Oil Project. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990. Postdoctoral fellowship awards from the Division of Chemistry of NSF and from the NSF-NATO Program supported his postdoctoral research work in applications of NMR spectroscopy to inorganic and polymeric solids at Berkeley (1990) and at the Max-Plank-Institüt fur Polymerforschung in Mainz, Germany (1991). Dr. Chmelka joined the faculty at UCSB in 1992. Professor Chmelka's research is motivated by the need to understand at a molecular level the fabrication and functions of new catalysts, adsorbents, porous ceramics, and heterogeneous polymers. These broad categories of technologically important materials are linked by their crucial dependencies on local order/disorder, which often governs macroscopic process or device performance. We are broadly interested in heterogeneous solids, whose sizable variations in local ordering and dynamics have pronounced influences on the adsorption, reaction, optical, or mechanical properties of these materials. Through development and application of state-of-the-art techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, we observe many common molecular features among these diverse systems, which provide new insights and design intuition for our materials chemistry and engineering objectives. We benefit form close collaborative research relationships with a number of industrial partners and foreign laboratories.

Appointments, Honors, and Awards

• Professor at Department of Chemical Engineering
• NSF Presidential Young Investigator (1992)
• Camille & Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1993)
• Packard Foundation Science and Engineering Fellowship (1993)
• Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1996)

Some specific research projects and references

• A. Monnier, F. Schüth, Q. Huo, D. Kumar, R.S. Maxwell, D. Margolese, G.D. Stucky, M. Krishnamurty, P. Petroff, A. Firouzi, M. Janicke, and B.F. Chmelka, "Cooperative Formation of Inorganic-Organic Interfaces in the Synthesis of Silicate Mesostructures", Science, 261, 1299 (1993)
• B.F. Chmelka and J.W. Zwanziger, "Solid-State NMR Line Narrowing Methods for Quadrupolar Nuclei: Double Rotation and Dynamic-Angle Spinning", in NMR Basic Principles and Progress, 33, P. Kosfeld and B. Blümich, Eds., Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 79 (1994)
• B.F. Chmelka, K. Schmidt-Rohr, and H.W. Spiess, "Molecular Dynamics in Polymers Studied by Multidimensional Solid-State NMR", in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Probes of Molecular Dynamics, R. Tycko, Ed., Kluwer, Minneapolis, 113 (1994).
• M. Wilhelm, A. Firouzi, D.E. Favre, L.M. Bull, D.J. Schaefer, and B.F. Chmelka, "Dynamics of Benzene Adsorbed on Ca-LSX Zeolite Studied by Two-dimensional Exchange 13C NMR", J. Am. Chem. Soc., 117, 2923 (1995)