Liming Dai Leads Air Force Nanomaterials Project

Liming Dai will lead a team seeking to develop 3D nanomaterials with the useful properties found in flat nano-structures.

Case Western Reserve University professor Liming Dai will lead a national team of researchers seeking to create 3D nanomaterials that possess the unique properties found in one- and two-dimensional nano-structures.

The scientists’ goal is to produce new materials for a host of uses, ranging from high-efficiency batteries, ultracapacitors, fuel cells and hydrogen storage devices to lightweight thermal coatings for hypersonic jets, multifunctional materials for aerospace, and more.

The team of researchers from five universities, two government research institutes and a private company is being funded by a Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant totaling more than $7 million over five years. The grant is administered by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Recent theoretical studies and computer modeling have predicted great promise for three-dimensional (3D) pillared carbon nanomaterials. No one has been able to make them with controlled and repeatable junction properties, said Liming Dai, the Kent Hale Smith professor of macromolecular science and engineering at Case Western Reserve. Dai is also director of the Center of Advanced Science and Engineering for Carbon (CASE4Carbon), and principal investigator on the grant.

“This requires a multi-university effort,” Dai said

Dai’s research center will develop technology needed to build carbon nanotubes and graphene sheets into nanoporous frameworks that would produce strong electrical and thermal conductivity and other properties in three dimensions.

His team plans to build 3D networks of alternating layers of carbon nanotubes and graphene. Nanotubes are single rolled molecules that conduct strongly but only in one direction. Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon that is highly conductive in two directions along the plane of the sheet.

Nanoporous materials made of boron-carbon-nitrogen nanotubes and/or nanosheets are far less orderly than the frameworks above and would perform better in the kinds of high temperatures found, for example, on the leading wing edge of a jet flying at over five times the speed of sound, providing thermal dissipation, mechanical structures and sound damping.

“Both kinds of structures are porous — the density is very low — which is good for aerospace applications,” Dai said. “They have huge surface area compared to volume, which is good for energy storage.”

Zhenhai Xia, a professor of materials science and engineering at North Texas University, will guide development through extensive multi-scale computer modeling.

Another Case Western Reserve professor, Chung-Chiun Liu, will characterize the electrochemical properties of the materials. Vikas Prakash, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, will characterize mechanical properties and thermal and electrical transport in these nanostructures. He will also explore the use of mechanical strain in tuning electrical and thermal transport in these materials.

Once the basic materials are made, others will hybridize them for custom uses.

Zhong Lin Wang, the Hightower Chair and Regents’ professor of materials science and engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and a pioneer in piezoelectronics and nanogenerators, will integrate zinc oxide components to produce and characterize structure and property changes triggered by exposure to certain wavelengths of light, mechanical or other stimuli.

Quan Li, Director of Organic Synthesis and Advanced Materials Laboratory at the Liquid Crystal Institute and an adjunct professor in the Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program at Kent State University, will tap his lab’s expertise in liquid crystals to develop multi-functional capabilities.

Researchers from Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and GrafTech Inc., a private company in Cleveland, will also contribute to the effort.

Liming Dai was born October 10, 1961 in Wenzhou, China. He earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Zhejiang University in 1983 and a PhD in chemistry from Australian National University in 1991. He has taught and conducted research at Cambridge University and the University of Illinois before coming to Case Western. Dai holds a guest professorship at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. He is also currently working on using nanostructures to build more cost-efficient fuel cells.