Bio/CV:
Aleksandr Smirnov is a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry working in Naomi Ginsberg's group. Before coming to UC Berkeley, Smirnov received a B.A. with high honors in Chemistry from Kenyon College, where he correlated changes in vibrational spectra of perylene and naphthalene diimide thin films to investigate their coupling and charge transfer interactions.
Aleksandr's doctoral work focuses on understanding and controlling hierarchical material formation through the development of a novel benchtop microscope to facilitate efficient material design and discovery. Specifically, Smirnov has used interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT) to size evolving nanoparticles in solution below the diffraction limit with minimal perturbation to the reaction.
As a Kavli ENSI fellow, Aleksandr is applying iSCAT to gain insight into the self-assembly of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Though this class of porous materials holds great promise in gas capture, catalysis, and drug delivery, MOF formation remains poorly understood, limiting material design. Aleksandr aims to utilize iSCAT to extract time-dependent physical and hydrodynamic size, polydispersity, diffusion constant, and refractive index for varied reaction conditions, which will guide him towards optimizing them to improve crystallinity, monodispersity, and yield. The broader correlations between in situ measurements and reactant identities help classify reactions based on their evolution and complexity, providing insight into the principles of hierarchical material formation.
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