Postdoc – Advanced Membranes for Water & Mineral Recovery

UChicago Argonne, LLC; Lemont (IL); On-site; USD 73,000 - 121,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive benefits

Safe and welcoming workplace

Job summary

Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher to develop materials, membranes, and fabrication processes for water and critical mineral recovery.

The role emphasizes design of experiments, synthesis, and advanced characterization, with collaboration within MERF and external partners to translate discoveries into scalable solutions. This is a full-time, on-site position with competitive benefits.

Qualifications

• Recent or soon-to-be-completed PhD in chemical engineering, materials science, or related fields.
• Demonstrated knowledge in materials synthesis and characterization.
• Demonstrated knowledge in membranes, water treatment, and element extraction.
• Demonstrated knowledge of transport property study such as electrochemical properties of ion-exchange membranes, permeance and selectivity tradeoff in pressure-driven membranes.
• Experience in polymer material and sorbent synthesis.
• Experience in surface functionalization.
• Experience in coating, printing, or any other wet-chemistry deposition techniques.
• Publication record with excellent written and oral communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Synthesize monomer and polymer materials for polymer membranes and sorbents development.
• Conduct surface modification and functionalization to membranes and sorbents to achieve target separation properties.
• Formulate and synthesis inks for membrane deposition, including electrospinning, slot-die coating, and 3D printing.
• Design composite and hybrid materials and membranes to enhance selectivity and permeance of membranes or separation factors, adsorption capacity and kinetics, and chemical stability of sorbents.
• Conduct structure, microstructure, physics and chemical properties of materials, as well as transport, separation, and electrochemical properties of membranes.
• Develop techniques and strategies for postmortem characterization of membranes to understand fouling, scaling, and membrane failure mechanism.
• Write reports and high-impact papers and present research at conferences.
• Develop or support the development of collaborations with academia and industry.

Skills

Materials synthesis

Membrane fabrication

Characterization

Data analysis

Proposal writing

Education

PhD in chemical engineering or materials science

Tools

X-ray diffraction

SEM

TEM

FTIR

Raman

XPS

ICP-MS

EIS

Job description

Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher to develop materials, membranes, and fabrication processes for water and critical mineral recovery.

The role emphasizes design of experiments, synthesis, and advanced characterization, with collaboration within MERF and external partners to translate discoveries into scalable solutions. This is a full-time, on-site position with competitive benefits.