Duke Energy Academy Hands On Session at SMARTLab

There are promising clean alternative energy devices such as fuel cells, solar cells, and lithium-ion batteries. Although these developing energy technologies represent important steps towards meeting our energy demands, new breakthroughs are needed to improve their performance in terms of durability, harvest efficiency, power density, conversion efficiency and cost. In order to overcome these challenges, researchers have worked to create new nanosized functional materials. Nanomaterials have very high surface area to volume ratios, which result in special properties in comparison to bulk materials. Recently, electrospinning, a simple, inexpensive technique, has attracted significant attention in the preparation of nanomaterials. It has been used to make nanofibers, nanotubes, nanobelts and porous membranes. These electrospun nanomaterials have unique properties applicable to a wide range of fields, including the fabrication of nanomaterials for use in energy conversion devices. The advantages of electrospinning are high surface area to volume ratio, wide variety of polymers and materials, ease of material combination, relatively low startup cost, ease of fiber deposition onto other substrates, and scalability.

This lab module focused on the fabrication process of ZnO nanofiber using electrospinning. The most effective parameters were introduced and discussed. Later on in the lab, ZnO precursor solution was prepared. An aqueous PVA solution was first prepared by dissolving PVA beads in deionized water and heating at 70 °C with vigorous stirring for 2 h, and zinc acetate was added to the solution. Thereafter, a ZnO/PVA solution with an optimized viscosity suitable for electrospinning was obtained. The solution was loaded into a plastic syringe and the needle was connected to a high voltage power supply.

Students and teachers learned about nanomaterials, fibers, and engineering behind the material properties that have been achieved through electrospinning and the characterization procedures.