Graduate Student
Home Faculty Advisor: Professor Ulrich Keyser, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
Host Faculty Advisor: Professor Alex Zettl, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Mustafa is a Doctoral researcher studying “Single Molecule Detection through a 2D membrane”. During his undergraduate studies, electronic engineering at the University of Southampton, he was involved in a range of healthcare projects including developing a point of care diagnosis equipment. In his Master project, he designed and built a real-time Raman spectrometer, before coming to Cambridge to study an MRes in Graphene Technology.
The project is closely linked to the Ph.D. research of Mustafa, to understand and control ionic selectivity across semi-permeable membranes that are crucial to key applications such as batteries and reverse osmosis power generation. Within the Keyser group, he is studying the behavior of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as 2D porous membranes, utilizing intrinsic defects within chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The Zettl group also has a wealth of expertise in creating, imaging and manipulating nanopores using a different technique involving TEM drilling and dielectric breakdown pore creation. This project will provide an opportunity to explore the benefits and drawbacks of the respective methods and apply these to studies of ionic flux across these membranes to study the reverse osmosis process.