Materials and polymers are everywhere! The discovery of new materials is essential to developing technology for the future. Researchers in our Department are synthesizing and studying new organic, inorganic, and polymeric materials that have potential to be applied in biodegradable plastics, solar cells, light emitting diodes, fuel cell electrodes, magnetic devices, catalytic convertors, membranes, hydrogen storage devices, and other applications. Our Department features many recently renovated research labs and is home to state of the art instrumentation for characterization, ranging from mass spectrometry, imaging and microscopy, non-linear optics, and myriad spectroscopic tools.

The Advanced Materials & Process Engineering Laboratory (AMPEL) provides a unique interdisciplinary approach to research in materials science involving faculty in Chemistry, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Metals and Materials Engineering.