Research Overview
The Badding group focuses on several areas of inorganic and polymeric materials chemistry, including optoelectronic materials and metamaterials, thermoelectric materials, chemical and physical phenomena in microscale and nanoscale capillaries and orifices, biomedical materials, and polymer nanofibers. A theme running through much of our research is the exploitation of high pressures, which can allow for new phenomena and very useful capabilities not otherwise possible at ambient pressure. High pressure supercritical fluids, for example, can combine the physical transport properties of a gas with the solvating ability and density of a liquid. As a result there is increasing interest in high pressure fluids across a variety of industries and in new technological areas. At the micro and nano scales, the use of high pressures becomes increasingly practical because pressure is force per unit area and the forces involved become very small as the area decreases. In general, we prefer to focus on basic problems that have the potential to have a major technological impact over time and/or open new areas of scientific research. Our recent demonstration of the fabrication of micro- to nanoscale wires, radial heterojunctions, and longitudinally patterned structures within the pores of microstructured optical fibers (Science 311, 1583-1586 (2006)) is a good example of what can be achieved by applying our high pressure/solid state chemistry toolbox to a new research area. The materials and structures that we make have a wide range of application across a broad range of disciplines; the in-fiber semiconductr/metal structures are being applied to optoelectronic devices, nanoscale imaging, and chemical sensing, for example. Our research is thus very interdisciplinary, involving collaboration with materials scientists, physicists, other chemists, entomologists, electrical, chemical, and mechanical engineers, and faculty at our Hershey Medical School and Applied Research Lab.
We have also developed a novel, practical, high pressure process we call "jet blowing" for fabricating polymer nanofibers in larger quantities than possible by traditional techniques such as electrospinning. This process has the additional advantage that it can be used for certain difficult to process polymers, such as PTFE (Teflon), which is non melt processible. We are collaborating to investigate the biological and other surface properties of the superhydrophobic coatings synthesized by jet blowing. Other areas of interest include carbon materials, hydrogen storage materials, and inorganic/organic nanocomposites .
We thank the National Science Foundation (NSF DMR-0502906), the Office of
Naval Research (ONR), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA),
the Penn State/Lehigh Center for Optical Technologies (COT), the Worldwide University
Network (WUN), and the Penn State MRSEC, funded by the National Science Foundation,
for support. 
Jet blown PTFE fibers