The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering will hosts its Spring 2014 seminar from 3:15-4:30 pm on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 at the Perlstein Hall Auditorium. The topic, “Barrier-Mediated Pulsatile Release,” will feature Eric Nuxoll, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.

Many solutes are best released in pulses. Pesticides and master hormones are prominent examples. To date, pulsatile release has typically relied on user intervention (e.g., manual application of each pulse) or complex devices (timers, pumps), limiting the applications in which it is feasible. An elegant materials approach to pulsatile release involves interspersing sacrificial barriers between depots of solute. An external stimulant sequentially triggers each depot to release one dose of solute, each punctuated by a lag time due to the adjacent barrier layer.

The seminar will discuss efforts to generalize the approach to a variety of conditions. Control of pulse timing by tuning the thickness, composition, and heterogeneity of the barriers is demonstrated, along with the ability to release different solutes from the same system.