MAE Department - PG seminar - Material Design and Applications of Nano-Carbon Based Composites
This lecture reviews the state-of-the-art and challenges in nano-carbon based composites. In particular, combined with the discovery, controllable preparation and excellent properties of nano-carbon materials, i.e., carbon nanotubes and graphene, it proposes the quantitative characterization of interface properties, the construction of multilevel structure, and the integration of structural and functional performance, which are the key scientific issues to promote the application of high-performance nano-carbon based composites. The lecture introduces a new methodology of high throughput experimental and statistical analysis of the interface mechanics of nanomaterials, which achieves accurate measurement of the shear strength of graphene interface. Moreover, two examples of applications of these composites have been carried out recently. One is an ultra-black surface based on nano-carbon composites which can be used to absorb the clutter light and to improve the detection ability of the weak target. Another example is the lightning protection of carbon fiber reinforced composites for aircraft structures using carbon nanotube composites. The challenges and achievements will be discussed for both cases.
Prof. Dr. Zhong Zhang is a full professor at the School of Engineering Science, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He obtained his Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees at USTC in 1990, 1996, and 1999, respectively. Since 2000, he started to work at the Institute for Composite Materials (IVW), University of Kaiserslautern of Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) research fellow. In 2001, he obtained the AvH Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, which supported him to establish an independent research group at IVW between 2001 and 2006. He was recruited by the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, China in 2005, and served as the director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Nanosystem and Hierarchical Fabrication, before he joined USTC since 2022. His major research interests are polymer-based nanocomposites, nano-mechanics, nanostructured surfaces, coatings and applications. Up to now, he has published more than 250 refereed papers. He holds 4 European patents and 40 Chinese patents. He currently serves as the Chinese Editor of Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing. He has been invited for more than 20 plenary, keynote and invited talks on leading international conferences (ICCM and ACCM).