(260f) Nano-Engineered Materials for Energy Applications

The surface functionalization and nanostructure engineering of materials play a significant role in enabling higher performance for devices or process technologies.  Properties of nanomaterials are often determined not only by their material composition but also more by “engineering” of their porous structure, surfaces or internal interfaces. Chemical processing can be a versatile approach to achieving control of building-block nanostructures (nanoparticles, pores, and surfaces/interfaces) for various energy materials tailored to meet target application performance. This theme talk will overview some of our recent work on semiconductor quantum dots for solid state lightings or solar cells, graphene-based materials for supercapacitor electrode films and membranes, as well as oxide ceramic-based superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic membranes [a 2014 R&D100 Winner material technology] developed potentially for molecular separations or upgrading processing of pyrolysis biofuels.