Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, will be awarded the Arthur K. Doolittle Award by the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Division of Polymetric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE).
"Receiving this award is a major highlight for me," said Lutkenhaus. "I am honored to be considered among the researchers that have accepted this award in the past."
Lutkenhaus earned this honor for her outstanding talk on flexible MXene coatings at the ACS PMSE fall symposium.
MXenes are two-dimensional nanomaterials that are incredibly conductive and used in various applications, including electronics, energy storage and sensing. Since they are transition-metal carbides or nitrides, they can be layered as well as altered to obtain specific chemical properties.
By alternating layers of MXenes and polymer, a composite MXene film can be created. Prior to studies conducted by Texas A&M researchers, MXenes were studied without a polymer additive, producing films that easily cracked and flaked away.
"A MXene film contains many of these two-dimensional nanosheets stacked together, like a brick wall," she said. "In our work, we use a polymer additive as the ‘mortar’ to hold all of the MXene nanosheets together in a robust film."
The polymer acts as a glue, adhering to the faces of the MXene sheets. Furthermore, the researcher's processing system organizes all of the MXene sheets into a flat and layered structure.
This research is a step toward applying MXene films to numerous different surfaces, including fabrics, plastics or paints. She hopes these developments can lead to innovations such as spray-paint batteries, supercapacitors within fabrics or painted-on sensors.
This work is part of a collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation with Dr. Micah Green, professor in the chemical engineering department and Dr. Miladin Radovic, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Lutkenhaus will be formally presented the award at the ACS Spring National Meeting.