Title: Two-dimensional nanomaterial inks and additive manufacturing of energy storage devices

Program: Materials Science and Engineering PhD

Committee Chair: Dave Estrada

Committee: Dave Estrada, Claire Xiong, Jessica Koehne, Tony Valayil-Varghese

Abstract: Global issues including life-threatening environmental hazards, accelerated depletion of fossil fuel reserves, and increased greenhouse gas emissions, water, and air pollution, have been greatly accelerated by the rapid expansion of the global economy, urbanization, and improvements in living standards. Therefore, the imperative to develop and scale up sustainable, clean energy sources, along with their associated technologies, has received the greatest importance on a global scale. In line with the goal of developing such energy conversion and storage devices, supercapacitors stand out as highly promising energy storage devices, drawing significant attention due to their distinct advantages, including high power density, high capacitive retention, high charge-discharge rates, extreme cyclic life, and reliability.

Additive manufacturing (AM) of two-dimensional materials (2DM) based devices has acquired significant attention for the developing lightweight and flexible electronic devices such as sensors and energy storage devices, with complex geometries and low processing cost. Among the various additive manufacturing methods, aerosol jet printing (AJP) has emerged as a powerful tool in electronic manufacturing. AJP is known for its non-contact, high-resolution, and mask-less capabilities, enabling the printing of a wide range of materials.

In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as MXenes, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and black phosphorous (BP), have dawn considerable attention as potential electrode materials for supercapacitors. These materials offer several crucial advantages for next-generation electrochemical devices. This promise is rooted in their good electronic conductivity, excellent electrochemical and mechanical properties, their abundant active sites and good chemical, electrochemical and thermal stability, since these properties are promising for energy storage application. The main goal of this project is the synthesis and development of 2DM nanomaterial inks, including MXenes and TMD alloys inks, to be compatible with aerosol jet printing (AJP) of supercapacitors while elucidating a fundamental understanding of the energy storage mechanisms in such additively fabricated devices.