Title: Selective Nanoscale Mass Transport through Atomically Thin 2D Membranes for Energy, Environment and Healthcare Applications

Abstract: Atomically thin 2D materials offer new opportunities to study, understand, and control mass transport at the fundamental limit of length scales. Specifically, they allow for probing quantum tunneling as well as size-selective ionic/molecular sieving through defects that manifest as pores in an atomically thin membrane. Here, I will discuss our recent work in bottom-up 2D material synthesis and processing to enable fully functional large-area nanoporous atomically thin membranes for dialysis, nanoscale aerosol filtration, desalination, and ionic/molecular separations. I will introduce novel size-selective defect sealing approaches for functional large-area 2D membranes processing via facile interfacial chemistry. Finally, I will detail our advances in enabling highly selective sub-atomic species transport through atomically thin membranes for energy conversion/storage, isotope separations, and novel imaging applications as well as our efforts to move these technologies from the lab space to the commercial arena.

Bio: Piran R. Kidambi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Vanderbilt University since 2017. After receiving his PhD from the University of Cambridge, he pursued postdoctoral research at MIT through a Lindemann Trust Fellowship. Kidambi’s group conducts fundamental research on nanoscale mass-transport by leveraging the convergence between i) in-situ metrology, ii) bottom-up synthesis, and iii) process engineering, to enable disruptive advances in separations for clean-energy, environment/sustainability, catalysis, imaging, and healthcare applications. His research has been recognized via several awards including the DOE Early Career Award (2022), NSF CAREER (2020), Emerging Investigator – Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2022), ACS PMSE Young Investigator (2022), ECS Toyota Young Investigator (2020), and Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award (2018), among several others.