MateriAlZ Seminar: Valeria Nicolosi
MateriAlZ Seminar: Valeria Nicolosi
Friday, February 11, 2022, 11:00 a.m. MST
Professor Valeria Nicolosi
Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy
School of Chemistry
Trinity College Dublin
"Processing and Applications of 2D Nanomaterials Inks"
Zoom link | Passcode: 802925
MateriAlZ Seminar website | YouTube | Twitter
Abstract
Liquid phase exfoliation has been proved to be a cheap, scalable method for the mass production of 2D sheets. This talk will first discuss the galaxy of existent layered materials, with emphasis on synthesis, liquid-phase exfoliation, and characterization, focusing on some key applications recently developed in our laboratories, ranging from energy storage to printed electronics. We will for example discuss how two-dimensional Ti3C2 (MXene) can be formulated in aqueous and organic viscous inks for extrusion printing and inkjet printing, respectively, and demonstrate direct MXene printing on various substrates. The additive- and binary solvent-free MXene inks do not show the coffee ring effect, enabling high-resolution printing without substrate pretreatment. The resulting all-MXene printed micro-supercapacitors showcase excellent charge storage performance, including areal capacitance up to 43 mF/cm2 and volumetric capacitance up to 562 F/cm3 in protic gel electrolyte, coupled with a long lifetime and good flexibility. We also show examples of all-inkjet-printed MXene arrays for ohmic resistors. The versatile direct-ink-printing technique highlights the promise of MXene functional inks for scalable fabrication of easy-to-integrate components of printable electronics. We will also discuss how MXenes can be used as a conductive binder for silicon electrodes produced by a simple and scalable slurry-casting technique without the need of any other additives. The nanosheets form a continuous metallic network, enable fast charge transport, and provide good mechanical reinforcement for the thick electrode (up to 450 μm). Consequently, record-high areal capacity anodes (up to 23.3 mAh cm−2) can be demonstrated. EMI shielding applications will also be discussed.
Bio
Professor Valeria Nicolosi is the Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy at the School of Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She received a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) and a Ph.D. in Physics from TCD in 2006. She moved to the University of Oxford in February 2008 as a Marie Curie Fellow. In April 2008 she was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship. In 2012 she returned to Trinity College Dublin as Research Professor. In 2016 she was promoted to Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy. She is the first woman to have reached the position of Chair in the School of Chemistry since the foundation of Trinity College Dublin in 1592. Prof. Nicolosi is a 6 times ERC awardee. Over the past years, Prof. Nicolosi has published more than 200 high-impact papers. In 2018, 2019 and 2020 and 2021 she was recognized as one of the world's most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science. She has won numerous awards: the RDS/Intel Prize for Nanoscience 2012, the World Economic Forum Young Scientist 2013, EU Woman in Technology Award 2013, SFI President of Ireland Young Researcher Award 2014, SFI Irish Early Stage Researcher 2016, TCD ERC Awardee 2017, Women Business Forum Women of the Decade in Science & Innovation 2018.