Katherine Cimatu
Physical chemist Dr. Katherine Cimatu with Tharushi Ambagaspitiya, a second-year physical chemistry graduate student, carried on the work of Dr. Narendra Adhikari (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) and Dr. Uvinduni Premadasa (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) on polymers that are promising materials for artificial corneas.
“Dr. Adhikari characterized the materials to learn about the interfacial molecules at the polymeric surface. Later on, Dr. Premadasa used atomic force microscopy and SFG to investigate possible phase segregation of copolymers. Then, Tharushi continued the work by characterizing the phase segregation under the liquid environment and also by force mapping that tied the adhesion properties with the interfacial molecules,” says Cimatu, associate professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry and a member of the Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute at Ohio University.
Tharushi Ambagaspitiya
Cimatu and Ambagaspitiya published their work, “Evident phase separation and surface segregation of hydrophobic moieties at the copolymer surface using atomic force microscopy and SFG spectroscopy,” in the Journal of Colloids and Interface Science.
Cimatu’s group focuses on the synthesis and characterization of the monomers and polymers as well as the understanding of their physical and chemical properties for various applications.
Citation: Katherine Leslee A.Cimatu, Uvinduni I.Premadasa, Tharushi D.Ambagaspitiya, Narendra M.Adhikari, Joon Hee Jang, Evident phase separation and surface segregation of hydrophobic moieties at the copolymer surface using atomic force microscopy and SFG spectroscopy, Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 2020, Volume 580, 15 November 2020, Pages 645-659, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2020.07.066
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