Zhong Wang
March 29, 2021
Friends of GSA, we are back with the next story of the Grad Life Highlight series.
Today, we’ll share the story of Zhong Wang, a PhD student in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
“In 2016, I came to UT Dallas from China and started my graduate studies in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Alan G. MacDiarmid Nanotech Institute under the supervision of Professor Ray Baughman. My research interests include the developing of multifunctional carbon nanotube yarns for artificial muscles and energy harvesters, and the discovering of new types of solid-state refrigeration technology.
Conversion of external stimulates to mechanical energy in carbon nanotube artificial muscles can be game-changing for diverse applications. It can be used from medical devices for minimally invasive surgery to smart textiles that adjusts porosity in response to changes in temperature/activity levels or to chemical/biological threats. We recently invented unipolar carbon nanotube yarn for artificial muscles, which can provide a hundred times the force generation capability of natural muscles and twenty-nine times the rate capability.
As an artificial muscle runs in reverse, we discovered that our carbon nanotube yarn can effectively convert the available environmental mechanical energy into electrical power. When stretching the coiled carbon nanotube yarns 30 times a second generated 250 watts per kilogram of peak electrical power and no other reported harvester can provides such high electrical power or energy output per cycle as ours for stretching rates between a few cycles per second and 600 cycles per second.
There is a lot of interest in using waste energy to power the Internet of Things(IoT), such as arrays of distributed sensors. We found just 31 milligrams of our carbon nanotube yarn harvester could provide the electrical energy needed to transmit a 2-kilobyte packet of data over a 100-meter radius every 10 seconds for the Internet of Things. The ultimate goal is to use our technology to harvest the enormous amount of energy available from ocean waves to power our cities.”
When we asked Zhong to share some advice for students who might be interested in graduate school: “To students who are interested in graduate school, my advice is keep your thirst for knowledge and remain true to your original aspiration and enjoy your work. There may difficulties in this journey, don’t be shy to talk to your peers and ask help from seniors.”
PhD student,
Chemistry and Biochemistry,
School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics