Exploring the Potential of Silk and Nanocarbon toward Next-Generation Wearables
面向下一代柔性电子设备的蚕丝和纳米碳材料研究
Yingying Zhang（张莹莹）
ABSRACT
The development of flexible electronics and equipment attracts significant interests in recent years. It is of great importance to explore low cost and scalable preparation approaches for high performance flexible and wearable electronics. Silkworm silk, with five thousand years’ usage history, is a popular natural material for clothes or wearing accessories. In this talk, I will present our work on exploring the application of silk fiber/fabrics together with nanocarbons in flexible electronics. We demonstrated that carbonized silk fabric with various woven structures, based on their unique N-doped graphitic carbon nanostructure and the macroscale woven structure, could be worked as strain sensors with both of high sensitivity and high tolerable strain. We also demonstrated the fabrication of high performance silk E-skin, silk/graphene E-tattoos, silk based conductive wires and conductive silk-nanocarbon ink for printing electronic. I hope that our work may help to extend the application of silkworm silk materials from traditional textile industry to next-generation wearable electronics and smart textiles.
近年来，柔性电子设备的发展引起了人们的广泛关注。探索高性能柔性和可穿戴电子器件的低成本、大规模制备方法具有重要意义。桑蚕丝，是一种具有五千年使用历史的天然纤维材料，广泛用于衣服或佩饰的制作。过去几年，我们基于蚕丝材料和纳米碳材料开展研究，力图开发其柔性电子领域的应用。例如，我们尝试了将丝绸高温碳化为碳织物材料，基于其独特的氮掺杂石墨碳纳米结构和宏观尺度编织结构，展示了其柔性传感领域的应用，实现了具有高灵敏度和大应变范围的柔性应变传感器、织物基汗液分析贴片等高性能器件的制备。另外，实现了高性能蚕丝电子皮肤、蚕丝/石墨烯电子纹身、蚕丝基导电纤维以及用于印刷电子的蚕丝-纳米碳油墨的制备。我们希望，这些探索将有助于将蚕丝的应用从传统纺织行业推广到下一代可穿戴电子设备与智能织物，赋予这种古老材料新的生机。
BIOGRAPHY
Yingying Zhang is an associate professor at Tsinghua University. She received her Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from Peking University in 2007. From Jun. 2008 to Jun. 2011, she worked in Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) as a postdoctoral research associate. Then, she joined Tsinghua University in July of 2011. Her lab focuses on the design and controlled preparation of nanocarbon, silk, and their hybrid materials, mainly aiming to develop high performance flexible electronics and wearable systems. For example, Zhang’s lab reported nanocarbon-incorporated silk fibers with obviously enhanced the strength and toughness of the silk fibers obtained by directly feeding silkworms with diets coated with CNTs or graphene. Furthermore, Zhang’s lab developed a 3D technique for printing of CNTs@silk core-sheath fibers on textile by employing a coaxial spinneret and demonstrated its applications in smart clothes.
Dr. Zhang has authored more than 110 journal papers, including Nat Nanotechnol、Nat Commun、Sci Adv、PNAS、Matter、Adv Mater、JACS、ACS Nano、Nano Lett、Adv Funct Mater etc, with more than 4500 citations. Besides, she has authored 1 book and 2 book chapters, and 15 awarded patents. She has been supported/awarded by National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholar (2014), National Program for Support of Top-notch Young Professionals (2016), and Young Scholars of Yangtze River scholar professor program (2017).
张莹莹，清华大学副教授，博士生导师。2007年获得北京大学博士学位，2008年6月至2011年6月在美国洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室(Los Alamos National Laboratory)担任博士后，2011年7月起任职于清华大学。她专注于纳米碳、蚕丝及其复合材料的设计和可控制备开展研究，致力于开发新型柔性可穿戴材料和高性能柔性电子器件。例如，曾经报道了“添食育蚕法”，通过给家蚕喂食添有纳米碳材料的桑叶，获得了增强蚕丝；开发了同轴纺丝3D技术，实现了碳纳米管@蚕丝芯鞘纤维在织物上的直接制备，并展示了这种技术在智能服装上的应用；制备了丝蛋白-纳米碳“绿色”电子墨水，用于生物友好印刷电子器件的直接制备。共发表学术论文110余篇，包括Nat Nanotechnol、Nat Commun、Sci Adv、PNAS、Matter、Adv Mater、JACS、ACS Nano、Nano Lett、Adv Funct Matter等，被引4500余次。出版专著1本，参著书章2节，获授权专利15项。曾获国家优秀青年科学基金、万人计划青年拔尖人才、“长江学者奖励计划”青年学者等称号或资助。