Successful Doctoral Thesis Defense of Carola Vorndran

Symbolic picture for the article. The link opens the image in a large view.
Dr. Carola Vorndran and Prof. Matthias Thommes

Congratulations to Carola Vorndran for her successful doctoral thesis defense on 03.06.2024! She presented her work “Novel Methodologies based on a combination of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Relaxometry and Gas Adsorption for Advanced Characterization of Nanoporous Materials and Powders in the Wet and Dry State”.

During her PhD thesis supervised by Prof. Matthias Thommes, Carola worked on the development of novel methodologies for the characterization of porous materials using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry and gas adsorption. Valid assessment of textural properties such as surface area and pore size is essential for many applications such as chromatographic separation processes and catalysis. Characterization of porous materials is usually based on gas adsorption and mercury porosimetry. However, these methods are not sufficient for the characterization of wet porous materials used in liquid phase processes. Hence, Carola focussed on the development of NMR relaxometry as reliable methodology for textural characterization as well as the characterization of wettability effects during her thesis. The main focus was on surface area assessment but also the potential of NMR relaxometry for pore size analysis and wettability characterization was investigated.

We are happy that Carola will stay in our group as a senior scientist.