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Fakultät BCI

Doctoral Defense Ali Mansuri

© FSV
We are happy to announce that Ali Mansuri successfully defended his doctoral thesis on November 18. The title of his thesis is “Self-Diffusion and Structural Relaxation in Amorphous Solid Dispersions”.

In his PhD, Ali dealt with the fundamental question: How to quantify and control the relaxation and diffusion dynamics in polymeric dispersions of an active ingredient and a polymer? The outcome has a high relevance for the product design of amorphous systems in the life science industry. A main motivation of this study was developing mosquito nets with an insecticide molecularly dispersed inside the polymeric net, as one way to combat malaria. Here, the challenge is to adjust the diffusion coefficient of the insecticide such that diffusion is fast enough for the surface replenishment after washing the nets (which removes near-surface insecticide molecules), but not too fast for the insecticide to crystallize (and lose its potency). The toolbox presented in this work combined experimental techniques such as dielectric spectroscopy and DSC with theoretical approaches like continuous-time random walk to study molecular mobility. Highlights of the toolbox include developing a novel method for characterizing amorphous phase separation and extending free volume theory to a fully predictive method.

Ali is continuing his scientific journey as a postdoctoral researcher at AbbVie. We wish him all the best.