- Hyomin Lee
- Doctoral Candidate, Chemical Engineering
- Project: Design of Hydrophilic Surfaces
- co-advised by Michael F. Rubner, Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering
- B.S. Chemical Engineering, Seoul National University, 2009
- Email: hyomin@mit.edu
- Website: http://www.mit.edu/~hyomin
- Phone: (617) 253-6478
- Office: 66-357
Research Summary
Over the past few years, there has been a lot of interest in understanding and applying surface wettability ideas for various applications. Many groups including our research group have uncovered the role of surface textures, roughness and the chemical nature on its wettability. However, not much has been understood and studied in the hydrophilic aspect of wettability although this area also serves as a promising field such as anti-fogging, self-cleansing surfaces, membrane separation and anti-fouling surfaces.
My research involves understanding the role of chemical composition, porosity and roughness on hydrophilic surfaces and applying in diverse applications. Based on the key considerations for designing stable hydrophilic surfaces, fabrication techniques such as Layer-by-Layer assembly which provides a versatile and inexpensive approach to design hydrophilic surfaces is used in common applications such as anti-fogging to create mechanically robust coatings. Also surface modifications and systematic design and synthesis of responsive polymers in order to create solvent-responsive surfaces are some of the key issues that I plan to focus on. This work is in collaboration with Prof. Rubner in the Materials Science and Engineering Department.
