Collaborative Research: Thermal Drawing of Composite Fibers for Wearable Energy Storage Textiles

这笔赠款支持的研究将通过热拉伸促进对多功能复合纤维制造工艺的基本了解，从而使储能纺织品能够用于下一代可穿戴电子产品和智能纺织品。热拉伸是一种将纤维从熔体中拉出的制造工艺，是纺织行业最常用的纤维生产方法。由于其对熔体断裂的敏感性，其制造多功能复合纤维的能力一直受到限制。这项研究将填补关于复合材料的组成和纳米结构如何影响热拉伸过程中的失效机制的知识空白。有了新的基础知识，以纳米结构碳电极为填料，以聚合物电解质为基质的复合材料将被设计并加工成可穿戴纤维。这种复合纤维可以编织成储能纺织品，在许多消费、医疗和军事应用中用作可穿戴电子产品和智能纺织品的电源。这项研究将促进美国制造业科学和技术，并有助于保持美国在可穿戴和智能电子产品领域的技术和经济主导地位。这些研究任务将用于为美国制造业劳动力培训STEM领域的高技能工程师和科学家。与这项研究相关的推广活动将促进K-12学生，特别是来自女性和代表性较低的少数群体的学生，早期接触STEM。虽然热拉伸是一种能够大规模制造多功能纤维的通用工具，但由于对其失效机制的有限了解，它在制造复合纤维方面尚未充分发挥其潜力。本研究设计和实验了一维碳纳米材料和固体聚合物电解质的新型电极-电解液复合材料，并试图了解此类复合材料在热拉伸过程中的基本失效机理。失效机理将通过传输现象建模和过程中的流变学测量来阐明。因此，这项研究将阐明1)目前未知的一维纳米纤维在复合纤维热牵伸过程中的限速失效机制的结构效应，以及2)广泛观察但未解释的热拉伸对纳米纤维在所产生的复合纺织纤维中的排列和分散的工艺影响。更好地了解失效、排列和分散机制将为生产超级电容器类型的储能纺织品提供新的解决方案，并能够使用预制件的热拉伸来持续制造新的功能材料和设备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This grant supports research that will advance the fundamental understanding of the manufacturing process of multifunctional composite fibers through thermal drawing to enable energy storage textiles for next-generation wearable electronics and smart textiles. Thermal drawing, a manufacturing process that pulls fibers out of melts, is the most commonly used fiber production method in the textile industry. Its capability of manufacturing multifunctional composite fibers has been limited due to its susceptibility to melt fracture. This research will fill the knowledge gap on how the composition and nanostructures of the composites affect the failure mechanisms during the thermal drawing process. With the new fundamental knowledge, composites containing nanostructured carbon electrodes as the filler and polymer electrolytes as the matrix will be designed and processed into wearable fibers. Such composite fibers can be woven into energy storage textiles to serve as the power source for wearable electronics and smart textiles in many consumer, medical, and military applications. This research will promote US manufacturing science and technology and help preserve US technological and economic dominance in wearable and smart electronics. The research tasks will be used to train highly skilled engineers and scientists in STEM fields for the US manufacturing workforce. The outreach activities associated with this research will promote the early exposure of K-12 students, especially those from women and underrepresented minority groups, to STEM.While thermal drawing is a versatile tool capable of scalable manufacturing of multimaterial multifunctional fibers, it has yet to achieve its full potential in manufacturing composite fibers due to the limited understanding of its failure mechanism. This research designs and experiments on new electrode-electrolyte composites with one-dimensional carbon nanomaterials and solid polymer electrolytes and seeks to understand the fundamental failure mechanisms during the thermal drawing of such composites. The failure mechanism will be elucidated using transport phenomena modeling and in-process rheological measurements. As a result, the research will elucidate 1) the currently unknown structural effects of one-dimensional nanofillers on the rate-limiting failure mechanisms during the thermal drawing processing of composite fibers, and 2) the widely observed but unexplained process effect of thermal drawing on the alignment and dispersion of the nanofillers in the produced composite textile fibers. This better understanding of the failure, alignment, and dispersion mechanisms will provide a new solution to produce supercapacitor-type energy storage textiles and enable the continuous manufacturing of new functional materials and devices using thermal drawing from a preform.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.