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Professor-Student Research
March 27, 2015

Featured on Magazine Cover

Senior Trevor Sandgren and Dr. Jetty Duffy Matzner, associate

professor of chemistry, had their work selected for the cover of the
April 15 issue of Polymer Chemistry, a national, peer-reviewed scientific
journal.

Sandgren, a native of Redwood Falls, Minnesota, worked with Duffy

Matzner and Augustanas Dr. Duane Weisshaar (chemistry) on a portion
of this research project that has been five years of collaboration
between Duffy Matzner and colleagues from Binghamton University, Dr.
Wayne Jones and graduate student Megan Fegley.
Megan came into Dr. Jones research group one year before my
sabbatical out to his group and she was very interested in exploring
synthetic strategies to examine various effects for these metal sensing
polymers, Duffy Matzner said. I am an organic synthetic chemist, so we
began having weekly Skype meetings that lasted her entire graduate
career. We developed an organic polymer group in the Jones lab and I
worked with three graduate students and about 10 undergraduates. I
was very honored to help develop Megan's Ph.D. thesis.

Sandgren and Weisshaar assisted with the determination of the

molecular weights of these polymers after a National Science
Foundations Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
(NSF-EPSCOR) grant allowed the group to purchase an instrument for
Augustana that could be used to find these measurements.

This research has a long term goal of developing cheap and easy
methods to determine the concentrations of various metal ions in waste
water, Duffy Matzner said of the research project. It uses a long
polymer chain attached to receptors for the ions that will change their
photophysical properties. In other words if they come into contact with
the contaminant, they will start to glow. The intensity of that glow can
be used to find out how much of the contaminant is present in the
waste water.

The scientific advancement from

this research would allow them to
use more light emitted from the
sun and increase the efficiency of
solar cells, one of the greatest
current drawbacks, according to
Duffy Matzner.

In its current stage, the research

paper took six months to write and
this work will be featured
prominently in the next issue of
Polymer Chemistry (pictured).

We were honored and fortunate enough that [the magazine] thought

this body of work, which is one of the few ways to detect the difference
between different iron cations, was important enough to highlight,
Duffy Matzner said.

Her work on this project is not over and Duffy Matzner is already onto
the next stage of her research.

I am working with another graduate student at Binghamton University,

Anting Chen, to develop solid-state models for our systems, she said.
At Augustana I have worked with several undergraduates on a similar
type project that uses some twists in the synthesis to examine polymers
that could be used in hybrid solar cells along with Trevor.

Sandgren presented his findings from that project in October 2014 at

the Midwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society.
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