Speaker：Robert A. Welch

Time: Tuesday,2:00p.m.,20th October

Place: D111 SINANO

Abstract:

Yarns having remarkable energy storage and energy harvesting capabilities can be made by a process called biscrolling, in which one or more multifunctional guests are overcoated on a nanofiber sheet, which is then twist-inserted to make either non-coiled or coiled yarn. The used highly-oriented nanofiber sheets are typically either carbon nanotube sheets that are drawn from carbon nanotube forests or electrospun sheets of polymer nanofibers. Despite having up to 95 wt% of guest trapped in the corridors of helically scrolled yarn, the biscrolled yarn can be weavable, braidable, sewable, knottable, and washable. Using this biscrolling process, and related processes, we here describe textiles and yarns that harvest glucose in human serum as electrical energy, provide high areal energy and power density redox supercapacitors or batteries, serve as low density superconducting wires, and function as torsional and tensile artificial muscles that can be thermally, electrically, chemically, electrochemically or light powered. The described work resulted from collaborations between the University of Texas at Dallas, Hanyang University, the University of Wollongong, and the University of British Columbia.

Bio:

In August 2001, Ray Baughman became the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry and Director of NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas in Dallas.He is a Member of The National Academy of Engineering and The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas; a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry; an Academician of The Russian Academy of Natural Sciences; an Honorary Professor of four universities in China; and is on editorial and advisory boards of Science, Materials Research Letters, the International Journal of Nanoscience, and the Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.