Research

Titan

The FINESST Fellowship will provide me the opportunity to further explore the proposed project 'Experimental Studies to Determine the Impact of Propane, Acetylene, and Ethylene In and Around Titan's Lakes' for the next three years. I will experimentally create varying mixing ratios of methane, ethane, propane, ethylene, acetylene, and nitrogen and explore their phase boundaries in an attempt to constrain the quantities of minority species in Titan's lakes. I will start this research in January 2021 and I guess you could say that midnight on January 1 will be my FINESST hour.

Until that time I am finishing work on the methane-ethane binary system and anticipate submitting a manuscript on it soon. In this research, I used Raman spectroscopy to probe the phase changes of the methane-ethane system at temperatures ranging between 50 and 95 K. During this time I also looked more closely at the solid phase transitions of ethane. There are three solid phases that occur between 89 and 90 K, making this interesting both in the extremely narrow range these transitions happen and its consequences for Titan.

Outer Solar System Material

Although I have a soft spot for Titan, I overall enjoy studying the icy material found on bodies in the outer Solar System. Pluto's Sputnik Planitia region is of particular interest and I've contributed to past research in the lab focusing on the carbon monoxide-nitrogen-methane system. All three of these species are found in the region and the combination of them could help explain the convective processes in the area.

While my current focus is on Titan, I do hope to have the opportunity in the near future to further explore the more icy bodies of the outer Solar System.

Interactions of PEG-Li+ with Supercapacitor Interfaces

As part of the Astronomy and Planetary Science PhD program, students are expected to take on an additional project during their second year. This project must be outside of the student's current field of study or utilize a different method of data collection.

For my second project, I have chosen to work with Dr. Gerrick Lindberg, affiliated with NAU's Applied Physics and Materials Science Department and Biochemistry and Chemistry Department. Our main goal is to model the voids that form at the interface of supercapacitor electrodes and polymer electrolytes and determine whether the ions are attracted to those voids. If they are, this could result in a shorter lifetime for the supercapacitors. To accomplish this, I am creating molecular dynamics simulations of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and lithium ions (Li+).

While this project is not focused on planetary science, it will still provide invaluable skills, especially in learning out to run molecular dynamics simulations. This could prove to be quite beneficial in pairing with my phase boundary studies and create a more robust narrative.