Title: Biocompatible Piezoelectric Materials and Composites for Biomedical Applications
Speaker: Professor Xudong Wang
Date: Monday March 13, 2023
Time: 02:30pm
Location: EIT 3142
Nanogenerator (NG) has been considered a promising solution to biomechanical energy harvesting inside the human body. So far, many technological innovations have advanced NG technology towards a broad range of biomedical applications. Fundamentally, materials design and engineering draw the boundary where this technology may advance. In this talk, I introduce our most recent developments of piezoelectric materials and composites that are particularly designed for implantable NG applications. First, I present our wafer-scale approach to creating piezoelectric biomaterial thin films based on γ glycine crystals. The self-assembled sandwich film structure enables both strong piezoelectricity and largely improved flexibility. Then, new ferroelectric composites are presented as a new material used in 3D printing for directly manufacturing piezoelectric architectures with tunable piezoelectric and mechanical properties. Towards the end, novel applications of implantable piezoelectric materials are introduced, which enable closed-loop electrostimulations for many biomedical therapeutics.
Biography
Professor Xudong Wang is the Grainger Institute for Engineering Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and the Energy & Sustainability thrust Leader at the Grainger Institute for Engineering. Dr. Wang received his PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2005. His current research interests include studying the growth mechanisms and developing assembly techniques of oxide nanostructures; developing advanced nanomaterials and nanodevices for mechanical energy harvesting from human activities for biomedical applications; and understanding the coupling effect between piezoelectric polarization and semiconductor functionalities. He has won numerous prestigious national and international awards, including PECASE, NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, etc. He has published more than 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Energy, etc. His current h-index is 80.