| Description | Title: Liquid Metals for Heat-Free Solder and Semiconductors Speaker: Martin Thuo, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Iowa State University Abstract:
Advances in flexible/wearable electronics demand low temperature solders while a changing climate calls for affordable CO2 catalysts. We inferred that low-temperature solders can be obtained by remote melting of a metal and frustrating solidification while corrosion and catalysis can be addressed through surface engineering. Our group couples fundamental surface thermodynamics and autonomous processes to address these grand challenges. This talk explores; i) how complexity in composition of nanoscale (~5 nm) passivating metal oxides can be used to frustrate solidification of metallic particles leading to stable undercooled particles. Resulting metal particles are used as heat-free solders or formulated to metal inks for printing conductive traces on textured soft matter like biological tissues, plants, or plastics. Given that solidification occurs upon fracture of the oxide, incorporating these particles in a polymer matrix gives self-stiffening material. ii) When the passivating oxide is used as a reactive surface, organometallic components can be made and either locally deposited or in situ self-assembled through a ‘polymerization-induced self-assembly’ of 1D organometallic polymers. This process being a living polymerization, ad infinitum growth leads to high aspect ratio organometallic nanomaterials. Post-synthesis ablation of the ligands leads to carbon-coated metal oxides that show catalytic activity atypical of the parent oxide. Bio:
Martin Thuo is an associate Professor in the Department of materials science and engineering, with secondary appointment in electrical & computer engineering, at Iowa State University. Prior to this, he was a Mary-Fieser post-doctoral fellow (2009-2011) then a Nanoscale Science & Engineering Center Fellow (2011-2013) at Harvard University (George Whitesides’ group). He is the recipient of a number of awards such as ACS Nano rising star award, Lynn-Anderson research excellence award, MSE research excellence award, Black & Veatch faculty fellowship, among others. His research interests encompass the general theme of frugal innovation, through simplicity, with a focus on soft materials. * This seminar is part of the ME Graduate Seminar Series (ME520). All talks are free and open to public. ME students and alumni are encouraged to attend. |
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