Additive Manufacturing

Research Project

Colloidal nanocrystals have been widely studied and proven to have unique and superior properties compared to their bulk form. However, there is still a prominent need to convert the nanocrystals into useful form in a scalable and low cost manufacturing process and to understand their structure and property evolutions from nanoscale to meso- or macro- scale. The goal of this research thrust is to develop an additive manufacturing method to process nanocrystals from nanoscale to mesoscale, together with a hierarchical approach to engineer surfaces and interfaces in the printing process. This research provides a highly scalable, low-cost and versatile manufacturing process to transform nanocrystals into high-performance multifunctional devices with broad applications including thermoelectrics, electronics, sensors, and others.

Ongoing projects:

NSF Career: Printing and interface engineering of colloidal nanocrystals for flexible thermoelectrics and electronics
DOE: Additive manufacturing of thermal sensors for in-pile thermal conductivity measurement