My personal research has always utilized polymeric materials for analytical applications. At Los Alamos, much of my research has focused on separations science, which in recent years has focused on the separation of radioactive analytes including the actinides, polonium, strontium, yittrium, etc. Many of these separations have focused on developing LC columns for automated separation of these analytes. More recently, I have merged my interests in polymer science with the separation of actinides to develop polymer ligand films. In this technique, an extractive functionality is incorporated into a polymer surface to enable extraction, pre-concentration, and separation of radioactive analytes directly onto a surface. I also maintain a strong interest in microfluidic technology and in a variety of mass spectrometry techniques including ICP-MS, MALDI, and ESI. I have also applied a variety of techniques to studying nuclear forensics including method development and signature discovery.
My current work focuses on fundamental and applied polymer research including understanding how polymeric materials age. We apply a variety of analytical methods to understand the properties and behavior of polymers including mechanical testing, load testing, NMR, spectroscopic methods, and thermal methods. When combined with aging of materials at extreme conditions (usually high temperature or in radiation fields), we can understand how these materials will perform in the future. We are also evaluating a variety of additive manufacturing technologies for their suitability and applicability to solve problems in the national interest.
