Printable electronics
Printable electronics is an emerging technology that allows for the creation of electronic devices and circuits using conventional printing techniques such as inkjet, screen printing, and roll-to-roll printing. This technology offers several advantages over traditional electronics, including low cost, flexibility, and the ability to produce large-scale, custom-made designs. Printable electronic devices are made up of a variety of materials such as conductive inks, semiconductors, and insulators. These materials are deposited onto a substrate using a printing process, and the resulting device can be integrated into a variety of products, including wearable sensors, electronic displays, and smart packaging. Printable electronics has the potential to revolutionize many industries by enabling the creation of new products and applications that were previously impossible with traditional electronics.
Low temperature ceramic
While organic solution-based coatings have been widely researched, developed and marketed, the existence of versatile inorganic counterparts is scarce and limited to specific applications. Key reasons behind this can be found in inter-dependent relationship between manufacturing process and final product performance. A few examples include cement / sol-gel coatings used in construction and consumable goods can be processed at low temperature, however possess weak molecular bonding that affects the final mechanical strength. On the other hand, refractory ceramic coatings used in harsh conditions due to exceptional mechanical strength require high temperature sintering post-treatment to infuse and strengthen structural strength. There is clearly a trade-off between functional properties and manufacturing conditions of inorganic-based coating.
Recently, we have come across a type of material that holds the great potential to become equivalent to organic-based coating products. As the material and its various derivatives have been trialed in a wide range of applications from radioactive waste encapsulating management, road repairing, anti-corrosion, we aim to develop a new range of thin coating applications based on progressive improvement in reaction chemistry of the same material. Key components involved include commonly produced metal oxides and phosphoric-based acids that form a wide and strong binding network that contains tailored fillers to provide functionalities of the final coating. Above all, the whole process of synthesis and application happen at room temperature (strictly no extra energy is needed except for stirring, mixing, brushing, spraying) in aqueous solution (means tap water).The coating can well adhere to surface of metal, concrete, woods, paper by chemically reacting with the base materials and can be ready for service in matters of minutes to within hours. The capability to mix different kinds of fillers allow the final coatings to be functional to various purposes chemical resistance, flame-spreading retardation, heat insulation, corrosion resistance. More novel applications based functional fillers can also be expected such as surface self-cleaning, air quality improvement, temperature sensitivity and indication, heat reflection etc.
Solar panel recycling
With burgeoning concerns over climate change and the global energy crunch, countries have begun to massively adopt alternative renewable energy sources in a move towards a sustainable future. Among the different renewables, photovoltaic (PV) technology has emerged as one of the more established and popular options since it is considered safer, more reliable, and non-polluting. Furthermore, it has lesser geographical limitation, enabling its installation in large arid areas, urban environments, and even offshore. Advancements in manufacturing and globalization have driven down the cost of PV installations, making it much more affordable. These factors have propelled the rapid growth in PV industry which is projected to reach 303 gigawatts (direct current) of global cumulative installed PV capacity by 2025.
A typical crystalline silicon PV module has an average lifespan of 25-30 years. Coupled with increased PV installation, the volume of decommissioned PV panels will only be expected to rise, and 89 million tons of cumulative PV panel waste by 2050 is projected. Currently, the prevalent solution to dispose decommissioned PV is landfilling as it is a simple and straightforward approach. However, landfilling is unsustainable in the long run due to growing environmental concerns over the presence of hazardous materials and space limitations. Thus, it is imperative to establish proper waste management for decommissioned and end-of-life (EoL) PV modules. An environmentally friendly alternative to landfilling is recycling and upcycling, which enables resource sustainability by allowing raw materials present in PV waste to be rescued and repurposed.
Neuromorphic electronics
The human brain is a biological supercomputer that utilizes parallel computing architectures to perform complex computations (1018 FLOPS) with a low power consumption of about 20W. For a comparison, the fastest supercomputer today (Sunway TaihuLight) can perform a maximum of 93x1015 FLOPS with a power consumption of approximately 15.3 MW. Information processing in the human brain is highly parallel, when compared to deterministic serial processing in digital computers. Understanding the underlying foundation of learning in the human brain could provide the key to realizing more intelligent machine learning algorithms, seemingly impossible with today's von Neumann architectures. Neurons are the fundamental computational building blocks of human brain and they communicate with each other through specialized junctions called synapses. Despite remarkable progress in semiconductor technology, hardware implementation of neural networks emulating synaptic functionalities with comparable complexity and feasible power dissipation, remain exceptionally challenging. Thus, hardware implementation using standard microelectronic devices to emulate synaptic functionalities has become the foremost challenge in realizing a truly artificially intelligent network.
To realize an artificial electronic synapse that emulates the behaviour of its biological equivalent, the conductance or resistance of the electronic device (defined as synaptic weight) needs to be modulated continuously to demonstrate non-volatility. Two-terminal memristors are promising in this regard with the ability to alter conductivity based on its electronic history at an extreme low power consumption. Three-terminal transistors on the other hand offer advantages of additional gate control, thereby eliminating the need for additional training circuitry.This project aspires to unravel fundamental mechanisms of charge trapping in a memristor/transistor configuration and correlate these with the plasticity of biological synapses.
Halide perovskite
Perovskites have, in very recent years, emerged as a new class of "wonder" semiconductor material in the scientific community. Not only are these compounds inexpensive, they can also be easily processed through solution-based methods to form thin films of high electronic quality; possessing excellent optoelectronic properties that transcend those of conventional semiconductors such as silicon and gallium arsenide. With superior intrinsic properties such as high absorption coefficient, long-ranged charge diffusion lengths and low defect densities, solar cells made with these materials have achieved a remarkable 22.1% power conversion efficiency in less than a decade of research. With such a rapid progress as compared to any other photovoltaic technologies, perovskites have materialized to be one of the top scientific breakthroughs to date.
Due to the similar characteristics required for efficient light harvesting and emission, a good light absorber is often identified as a good light emitter, thereby explaining perovskites' rapid transition to other fields such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), transistors, and even lasers. Offering additional advantages such as band gap tunability and narrow emission wavelengths, a myraid of colours within the visible spectrum with high purity can be attained, increasing their functionality in various areas. With all things considered, it is unsurprising that perovskites are rapidly revolutionising the field of optoelectronic research and eminently considered the future of solar cells and display applications.
nripan@ntu.edu.sg
+65 6790 4595
ABN-B1C-17, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Nanyang Technological University,50, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798