(6eb) Design and Fabrication of Nanostructred Materails for Energy Applications and Functional Nanocoating

Nanostructured materials have attracted great interest in recent years due to their outstanding properties ranging from small size, high surface area, and outstanding performance in a variety of applications. For my doctoral research, I have been working on designing and synthesizing nanocomposites for application on catalysts and Li-ion batteries electrode materials. I  developed a novel instant gelation method for synthesizing of porous metal oxides/sulfides/carbinde/nitride with large surface area. If carbon source is introduced, the metal components can be well embedded in a 3D porous conductive carbon matrix. The nanocomposites are ideal candidates for batteries, catalysts, sensors etc.

 As a postdoctoral fellow, I have developed a general approach to prepare various free-standing metal sulfides and carbon mat for next-generation flexible batteries. I also developed a facile and cost-effective electrospray approach for ultrauniform, ultrafast, instantly-drying, and binder-free electrode preparation via utilizing micrometer-size graphene oxide nanosheets. This approach can significantly simplify the tedious traditional preparation techniques – drop cast and doctor blade, and more importantly get better adhesion and high uniformity. With this method, the desired mass loading of electrodes can be achieved with only a few minutes of spraying. The electrodes made can be directly used for battery assembly, no extra drying step required.  As an extension of the electrospray technique, I also conducted experiments on functional surfaces nanocoating with desired properties (e.g. anti-corrosive, anti-fingerprint, anti-reflective, self-cleaning properties), in which “lotus effect” property was achieved.

 In my independent faculty career, I would like to continue working on nanomaterials with application ranging from lithium batteries (Li-ion, Li-air, Li-sulfur battery), sodium-ion batteries, manganese-ion batteries, supercapacitors to catalysts, fuel cells, and solar cells. I will also be working on functional film coating via electrospray, for example, epitaxial manganese-based perovskite oxides thin film with colossal magnetoresistance effect, anti-corrosive film, and self-clean film coating.