The department would like to announce that Dr. Masoud Soroush received a Collaborative, National Science Foundation, Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (NSF-GOALI) grant for three years for his project entitled “GOALI: Design of Chemically Self-Regulated, Acrylic Coatings Processes through Iterative Use of Chemical Quantum Calculations and Spectroscopic Methods”. The total project funding is $1,111,574 that includes $612,000 in-kind contributions from DuPont. Dr. Michael C. Grady (DuPont) is the project's Co-PI, and Dr. Andrew M. Rappe (UPenn) is the project's PI at UPenn. Drexel is the lead institution in this collaborative project. Drexel’s funding portion is $877,370.

This project is aimed at quantitatively understanding the kinetics, the reaction mechanisms, and the relevant intermediates and transition states for important reactions in spontaneous thermal polymerization of alkyl acrylates using an integrated research strategy, with the ultimate goal of designing “chemically self‐regulated” polymerization processes for the production of high‐performance acrylic resins. The integrated research strategy includes first‐principles density functional theory calculations, design of experiments, batch laboratory experiments, and spectroscopic analyses. The potential impacts of this project are societal (through improved safety), environmental, economic, and in human resource development, among others. Spontaneous thermal polymerization allows for the production of higher quality, environmentally‐friendlier solvent‐borne paints and coatings at lower operating costs. The industrial partner is DuPont, who will make available their research facilities to the Drexel faculty and students for this project at no cost.

                 

Dr. Soroush was also awarded an ACS-PRF grant of $100,000 for 2 years for his project entitled "Study of Spontaneous Thermal Polymerization of Alkyl Acrylates Using Computational Quantum Chemistry". The total project funding is $508,000, in-kind contributions from DuPont of $408,000. Michael Grady (DuPont) will be the project's Co-PI.

This research project is aimed at understanding the kinetics of initiation in spontaneous thermal polymerization of methyl, ethyl, and n‐butyl acrylates using density functional theory calculations, with the ultimate goal of providing the most likely answers to the two fundamental and industrially‐important questions: What are the species that initiate the spontaneous thermal polymerization of alkyl acrylates? What are the initiation mechanisms? The better understanding of the spontaneous polymerization will allow the adhesives, paints/coatings, and plastic industries to produce higher quality, ‘greener’ resins at lower costs in a safer environment.