Courses Taught
CHE 3410 Sustainability in Chemical Engineering
CHE 4151 Honors Independent Research I
CHE 9000 Dissertation Research
Research Areas
- Photocatalysis
- Plasmonic materials
- Nanoscale chirality
Research Summary
Research in the McPeak Lab at Louisiana State University focuses on engineering optical
materials and understanding their fundamental light-matter interactions. We work
to apply these engineered metastructures to meet the environmental, biological and
security challenges of the 21st century. We leverage fundamental chemical engineering
principles buoyed by a deep understanding of materials science and nano-optics to
tackle challenging problems. Our work has applications in diverse fields such as
biosensing, water treatment, and photo-detection.
Awards & Honors
- LSU Alumni Association Rising Faculty Research Award, 2018
- National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2017
- Dow Excellence-in-Teaching Award, 2017
- BASF Sustainability Lab Recipient, Louisiana State University, 2016
- Most Downloaded Paper, ACS Photonics, 2015
Selected Publications
- Plasmonic films can easily be better: rules and recipes
KM McPeak, SV Jayanti, SJP Kress, S Meyer, S Iotti, A Rossinelli, ...
ACS photonics 2 (3), 326-333
- Complex chiral colloids and surfaces via high-index off-cut silicon
KM McPeak, CD van Engers, M Blome, JH Park, S Burger, MA Gosalvez, ...
Nano letters 14 (5), 2934-2940
- In situ x-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy of ZnO nanowire growth during
chemical bath deposition
KM McPeak, MA Becker, NG Britton, H Majidi, BA Bunker, JB Baxter
Chemistry of Materials 22 (22), 6162-6170