Fossil fuels continue to be the main source of energy production worldwide, although they are not renewable and cause severe environmental pollution and global warming challenges. Hence, clean and renewable energy resources are in demand to replace the tradition fossil fuels. Piezoelectric materials are considered as one of the most promising solutions by harvesting mechanical energy from sustainable environmental resources e.g. fluid flow (wind, wave, rain, tides), human/animal motion, moving vehicles, etc. and converting it into electricity. The traditional piezoelectric materials are made of inorganic salts such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT) family and synthetic polymers such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), which provide one or more challenges related to rigidity, brittleness, difficulty in processing, toxicity and non-degradability. Chitosan is a biocompatible and biodegradable polysaccharide which has shown to be piezoelectric owing to its asymmetric semi-crystalline structure. However, without any modification the piezoelectric performance of chitosan is too low to satisfy practical applications. Electrospinning is a fibre formation technology under high electric voltages that has been successfully applied to improve the piezoelectric performance of biomaterials. The piezoelectricity improvement is due to the alignment of molecular dipoles along the applied electric field as well as the macroscale alignment of fibres in one direction. Prior to electrospinning of chitosan, it needs to be dissolved in a solvent to make a spinnable viscose solution. Unfortunately, most solvents used in electrospinning are organic based, which are harmful to environment and health.
This project aims to prepare electrospun chitosan fibres using deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as an alternative to their harmful orgonic counterparts. DESs are a new class of green solvents made by simple mixing of two biodegradable components associated with strong hydrogen bonding interactions. The ionic nature of DESs is beneficial for electrospinning process by enhancing the conductivity of electrospinning solution. In addition, the physico-chemical properties of DESs such as chemical structure, boiling point and surface tension could be adjusted to satisfy the solubility and spinnability of chitosan. The project is co-supervised by Drs Alireza Akbarinejad, Kaveh Shahbaz and Jenny Malmstrom.
Undergraduate
If you are interested in laboratory-based projects and are keen to learn about deep eutectic solvents, electrospinning and fibre characterization techniques, e.g. scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), mechanical testing, etc., this may be the right project for you.
No lab has been assigned to this project