Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering EECE Department Seminar Friday, March 20, 2015 11:00am Brauer Hall, room 12 Pencils, Paper and Movie Discs: Curious Minds and Materials Discoveries ABSTRACT Curiosity is a fundamental driving force for scientific research. In this talk, I will discuss a few materials discoveries and innovations inspired by non -scientific sources. For example, aggregation is a major problem during the manufacturing and processing of graphenebased materials, which can be solved by solutions inspired by crumpled up papers in a waste basket. Crumpled graphene particles have very weak inter-particle interactions, therefore they become aggregation resistant, and exhibit nearly universal solvent processability. Next, I will show how movie discs were found useful as nanoimprinting patterns for improving the performance of solar cells through light trapping. The last story is about how a question asked by students after class inspired their creation of sensors from ordinary office supplies. Jiaxing Huang, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University Jiaxing Huang is an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. He received his B.S. degree in Chemical Physics from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2000, Ph.D. in chemistry from UCLA in 2004, and became a Miller Postdoc Fellow at UC Berkeley before joining Northwestern in 2007. His main research interest is in the general area of material chemistry, processing and manufacturing. Some of the examples include 2D soft materials, organic nanocrystals and metal nanostructures. He is also interested in using them as a platform for materials education. Recent recognition of his work includes an NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Refreshments will be served For more information contact Kim Coleman at [email protected] Fellowship, an Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, a quadrennial Fissan-Pui-TSI Award from the International Aerosol Research Assembly, being named by Thompson Reuters as a Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.