RII Track-4:NSF: Programmed Material Transport Properties via Scalable Assembly Processes

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A tremendous need exists for battery technology with enhanced storage capacity. Addressing this need requires new advances in battery fabrication strategies, such as scalable methods for creating silicon nanoparticle electrodes. The consequence would result in a broad, transformative impact across all aspects of modern life such as increasing the range of electric cars, providing more effective storage for distributed power systems, and yielding compact medical devices. Toward this vision, the aim of this fellowship project is to elucidate an advanced fabrication pathway capable of programmatic control of material microstructures across multiple length scales. The goals of this fellowship are to (1) strengthen the PI’s additive manufacturing research program with intensive training on the synthesis and multi-scale characterization of inorganic functional materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara; (2) bring long-term sustained improvements to the research and education capacity of the University of Hawaiʻi in materials science and advanced manufacturing; and (3) establish long-term collaborations and training opportunities between University of Hawaiʻi and University of California, Santa Barbara, including with the NSF-supported Materials Research Laboratory. This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 EPSCoR Research Fellows (RII Track-4) project would provide a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and training for graduate student at the University of Hawaii (UH). This project advances the additive manufacture of composite materials with programmed material properties by seeking to establish the scientific foundation needed to balance time scales and length scales in hierarchical methods that combine self-assembly and field-assisted aggregation. The proposed research contributes to the state of knowledge regarding: (1) control of microstructure properties across length scales, (2) top-down design of material transport properties, (3) resultant hypothesized improvement in material performance, and (4) methodology to implement this programmatic control in a scalable manner. As many of the underlying scaling relationships will translate to other types of external fields, the outcome of this project will enable the assembly of composite materials with programmed transport properties. The research objectives are to (1) establish a framework for the hierarchical assembly of battery materials using acoustic fields and (2) elucidate the structure-property relationships of nanoparticle networks in materials fabricated by field-assisted colloidal assembly. The training and synergistic objectives are to establish a sustainable, long-term research collaboration, develop a new undergraduate course on additive manufacturing for University of Hawaiʻi, initiate new collaborations with University of California, Santa Barbara, and establish a mutual student exchange program with the MRL. The project impact will be sustained through joint publications, collaborative proposals, student co-advising, and collaborations between institutes at University of California, Santa Barbara and University of Hawaiʻi.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.