SNM: Large Scale Manufacturing of Low-Cost Functionalized Carbon Nanomaterials for Energy Storage and Biosensor Applications

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

The benefits of graphene nano-petal structures are high surface area-to-volume ratio and high thermal and electrical conductivities. Graphene nano-petals can be functionalized for specific applications such as sensors, power and energy and lightweight materials. This grant provides funding to boost the throughput and yield of coated graphene nano-petal structures by ~5 orders of magnitude to 10m2/h from the current lab-scale throughput thus opening the door to their commercial viability in diverse application areas such as biosensing, electrochemical energy storage to high strength, lightweight carbon fiber composites. This major breakthrough will arise from comprehensive research proposed in five thrust areas, namely the design of continuous, roll-to-roll processing systems for large scale graphene nano-petal growth; fundamental understanding of graphene nano-petal growth mechanisms in a novel high energy plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition reactor; understanding of vibrations and stability of the transported web based on coarse-grain simulation models; scalable functionalization of the nano-petals in an ambient environment; and study of new in-line and offline metrology tools for quality control of devices based on the functionalized nano-petal structures. Graphene nano-petal based surfaces could find wide commercial use in detection of glucose in ultra-low concentrations, supercapacitors with concurrent high power and energy densities with high cycle stability, and in high-performance carbon fiber composites and new thermal interfacial materials. The breakthrough technologies that will be developed in this project will find direct commercial outlet through strong collaboration with start-up companies. Many results and methods from this research are likely to be applicable to a wide variety of low-pressure and ambient roll-to-roll nanomanufacturing processes such as for flexible electronics and membrane technology.