THE LATEST RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT NEWS IN MANUFACTURING AND TECHNOLOGYTECH FRONT
New Conductive Polymer Nanocomposites Hold Promise for Portable Devices
R
esearchers at Drexel University (Philadelphia) have developed a strong, fl exible, electrically conductive nanocomposite material that could be used to power
future wearable energy storage devices. The conductive MXene-polymer nanocomposite material,
created by researchers in Drexel’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering in collaboration with scientists at Dalian University of Technology in China, is very fl exible yet has the strength to support many times its own weight. The researchers see potential for the material to improve electrical energy storage, water fi ltration and radio-frequency shielding in technologies ranging from portable elec- tronics to coaxial cables. Creating thin materials that can hold and disburse an electric charge while being contorted into a variety of shapes is a rarity in the fi eld of materials science, the researchers noted. In addition, tensile strength, the strength of the material when it is stretched, and compressive strength— its ability to support weight—are valuable characteristics for these materials that are just a few atoms thick. “Take the electrode of the small lithium- ion battery that powers your watch, for example. Ideally the conductive material in that electrode would be very small—so you don’t have a bulky watch strapped to your wrist—and hold enough energy to run your watch for a long period of time,” said Michel Barsoum, Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering. “But what if we wanted to make the watch’s wristband into the battery? Then we’d still want to use a conductive material that is very thin and can store energy, but it would also need to be fl exible enough to bend around your wrist. As you can see, just by changing one physical property of the material—fl exibility or tensile strength—we open a new world of possibilities.”
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The fl exible new material, called a conductive polymer nanocomposite, is the latest in ongoing research in Drexel’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering on a fam- ily of composite two-dimensional materials called MXenes. The development was the result of a collaboration between research groups of Yury Gogotsi, Distinguished University and Trustee Chair professor in the College of Engineering at Drexel, and Jieshan Qiu, vice dean for research of the School of Chemical Engineering at Dalian University of Technology
The fl exible, conductive MXene-polymer nanocomposites created by Drexel University engineers could fi nd uses in wearable energy storage devices.
in China. Zheng Ling, a doctoral student from Dalian, spent a year at Drexel, spearheading the research that led to the fi rst MXene-polymer composites. The research at Drexel was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy. “The uniqueness of MXenes comes from the fact that their surface is full of functional groups, such as hydroxyl, leading to a tight bonding between the MXene fl akes and polymer molecules, while preserving the metallic conductivity of nanometer-thin carbide layers,” Gogotsi said. “This leads to a nanocomposite with a unique combination of properties.”
January 2015 |
AdvancedManufacturing.org 35
Photo courtesy Drexel University
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