Distinguished seminar: “Processing and applications of 2D MXene inks”
Summary
Processing and applications of 2D MXene inks
Direct printing of functional inks is critical for applications in diverse areas including electrochemical energy storage, smart electronics and healthcare. However, the available printable ink formulations are far from ideal. Either surfactants/additives are typically involved or the ink concentration is low, which add complexity to the manufacturing and compromises the printing resolution. Here, we demonstrate two types of two-dimensional titanium carbide (Ti3C2Tx) MXene inks, aqueous and organic in the absence of any additive or binary-solvent systems, for extrusion printing and inkjet printing, respectively. We show examples of all-MXene-printed structures, such as micro-supercapacitors, conductive tracks and ohmic resistors on untreated plastic and paper substrates, with high printing resolution and spatial uniformity. The volumetric capacitance and energy density of the all-MXene-printed micro-supercapacitors are orders of magnitude greater than existing inkjet/extrusion-printed active materials. The versatile direct-ink-printing technique highlights the promise of additive-free MXene inks for scalable fabrication of easy-to-integrate components of printable electronics.
Figure 1: Printed devices based on MXenes inks
Short Bio
Professor Nicolosi is the Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy at the School of Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
She received a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) and a Ph.D. in Physics from TCD in 2006. She moved to the University of Oxford in February 2008 as a Marie Curie Fellow. In April 2008 she was awarded with a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship.
In 2012 she returned to TCD as Research Professor. In 2016 she was promoted to Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy. She is the first woman to have reached the position of Chair in the School of Chemistry since the foundation of TCD in 1592.
Prof. Nicolosi 7 times ERC awardee (StG in 2011, followed by 3 PoC grants to bring results of frontier research closer to the market, a CoG in 2016, followed by 2 further PoC grants in 2019 and 2022).
She has published more than 250 high-impact-papers and her research has attracted more than 35 M euro funding over the last 10 years. Aspects of her research have been licenced to companies like Thomas Swann, Samsung, Intel, Lego, etc.
In 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 she was recognized as one of the world’s most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations in Web of Science.
Prof. Nicolosi served as Advisory Board member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) from 2019 to 2021.
As a recognition of her carrier achievements, in 2021 Prof. Nicolosi was conferred the honourary decoration of “Cavaliere” in the Order “Stella d’Italia” by the President of the Italian Republic, at the proposal of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
