Center for Plastics Innovation (CPI)

Director

LaShanda Korley

Lead Institution

University of Delaware

Class

2020-2024

Mission

To develop catalytic and functionalization approaches and fundamental tools applicable to the upcycling of polymer plastics waste, with a strategic focus on enabling mixed-stream transformations from varied material form factors.

Research Topics

catalysis (heterogeneous), polymer upcycling, mechanical behavior, mesoscale science, materials and chemistry by design, synthesis (novel systems), synthesis (scalable processing)

Systems Studied

Systems: polymer, biological

Interfaces: organic/inorganic, organic/organic, gas/solid

Nanostructured: None

Experimental and Theoretical Methods

X-ray diffraction and scattering, X-ray imaging, X-ray spectroscopy, neutron diffraction and scattering, electron microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, surface science, high-throughput screening methods, molecular dynamics (MD), density functional theory (DFT), monte carlo (MC), finite element methods, mesoscale modeling, multiscale modeling, machine learning, data science