Welcome to the new Janna Maranas Research Group Home Page. The Maranas group is comprised of graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduate researchers investigating molecular structure and mobility in soft materials. Our work is equally divided between computation and experiment. We offer state-of-the-art research projects and a friendly environment in which to work and learn. Current projects address polymer electrolyte for battery application, plant cell walls, biomimetic membranes, and cosmetic formulation. In this website you can have a look at our research topics and techniques, and what the individual group members are working on.
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Cosmetic Products
We prepare a wide varieties of cosmetics including eye shadow, eye liner, hand cream, foundation, etc.
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TEM image of nano-particle filled SPE
Picture taken by Pengfei Zhan
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Welcome to Our New Website!
The Maranas group is comprised of graduate students and postdocs investigating molecular mobility in soft materials. Our work is equally divided between computation and experiment. We offer state-of-the-art research projects and a friendly environment in which to work and learn.
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Janna Maranas awarded DOE grant to power electric vehicles
Janna Maranas, professor of chemical engineering, has been awarded a $600,000 grant from the Department of Energy for her research proposal “Superionic conduction using ion aggregates.”
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Solid Polymer Electrolytes
One popular approach for improving conductivity in solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) for lithium-ion batteries is the addition of metal oxide nanoparticles. The cover figure depicts a rendering of the microstructure expected at the eutectic concentration when a nanoparticle-filled SPE of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and LiClO4 is exposed to humidity. At this lithium concentration, the formation of two phases is energetically favored, and nanoparticles may segregate to the lithium-poor phase.