Dr. Laura Espinal

Research Interest

• Functional materials for sustainable technologies and materials sustainability.
  
• Solid state sorbents for environmental applications, e.g., carbon capture.
  
• In situ structural analysis of gas separation materials via neutron and X-ray techniques.
  
• Physico-chemical characterization and mechanistic evaluation of catalytic materials.
  
• Rational and accelerated design of materials through an integrated computational and experimental approach.
  
  

Figure 1: Schematic representation of a sorption unit for CO2 removal from flue gas (post-combustion capture).

Publications (prior to joining NIST):

• Espinal, A. E.; Zhang, L. C.; Chen, C. H.; Morey, A.; Nie, Y. F.; Espinal, L.; Wells, B. O.; Joesten, R.; Aindow, M.; Suib, S. L. “Nanostructured Arrays of Semiconducting Octahedral Molecular Sieves by Pulsed-Laser Deposition” Nature Materials, 2009, 9, 54-59.

• Espinal, L.; Malinger, K. A.; Espinal, A. E.; Gaffney, A. M.; Suib, S. L. “Preparation of Multicomponent Metal Oxides Using Nozzle Spray and Microwaves” Advanced Functional Materials, 2007, 17, 2572–2579.

• Malinger, K. A.; Ding, Y. S.; Sithambaram, S.; Espinal, L.; Gomez, S.; Suib, S. L. “Microwave Frequency Effects on Synthesis of Cryptomelane-type Manganese Oxide and Catalytic Activity of Cryptomelane Precursor” Journal of Catalysis, 2006, 239, 290-298.