Chris is an analytical chemist specializing in the development of novel polymeric materials for application in microscale liquid phase separations and in the application of separations methods to environmental analysis.
Chris and his research group are interested in the development of new separations methodologies that will have a broad range of application and analytical interest in the fields of pharmaceutical, environmental and biochemical analysis. Interests also include characterization of the nature of chemical interactions observed between solutes and solvent phases, and how this is affected by the structure and chemistry of the solvent phase. Most recent work has concentrated on the development, characterization and application of novel amphophilic ionic polymers, polymeric nanoparticles, and synthetic lipid bilayer nanodiscs as pseudo-stationary phases in electrokinetic chromatography. Electrokinetic chromatography is a micro-scale analytical technique that can be carried out in capillaries or on microchip devices. Nonionic compounds are separated via differential interaction with an ionic pseudo-stationary phase in an electric field. The polymeric materials that are being developed in the laboratory have several significant advantages over commonly used micellar phases. These advantages stem from the stability of the structures, which leads to applicability for the separation of hydrophobic compounds, the ability to design and synthesize phases with unique chemical selectivity, and compatibility with mass spectrometric detection.