David Farland Email and Phone Number

Operation of the Aerosol Optical Tweezers (AOT) to conduct water diffusion and hygroscopic growth measurements via Raman Spectroscopy. Building a fundamental characterization of Water Diffusion Coefficients as a function of solute concentration (mass fraction, volume fraction & mol fraction) for a ternary system of Sucrose with: Citric acid, Mannitol , Erythritol, Xylitol and glycerol.

Extension of the same research from my SULI internship project. Also included training the new intern that arrived from Germany to take over the project after I started graduate school, took place during the fall semester 2015. Taught him how to operate the Quartz Crystal Microbalance, troubleshoot the QCM and how to approach working with the data collected.

Primary focus of research is monitoring the phase and viscosity changes of atmospheric aerosols as a function of light, temperature or changes in relative humidity. Operate a piezoelectric quartz crystal micro-balance to measure viscosity and mass changes of aerosol samples via frequency and dissipation shifts. Most of time was spent on viscosity measurement & relative humidity calibrations, water uptake experiments and phase transition analysis.