The Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering is hosting a seminar from 12:45–1:45 p.m. on Tuesday, February 21, at Perlstein Hall, Room 131. The talk, “Nanoscale-to-Macroscale Manufacturing of Advanced Energy and Electronic Systems,” will be given by Yanliang Zhang, an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at University of Notre Dame.

Biography: Yanliang Zhang received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2011, and his M.S. and B.S. from Southeast University in 2008 and 2005. His research focuses on additive manufacturing, scalable nanomanufacturing, autonomous and hybrid manufacturing, advanced materials and devices for energy conversion, sensing, and health monitoring. He has received honors including NSF Career Award, Young Investigator Award from International Thermoelectric Society, IBM Fellowship award, and multiple best paper awards at international conferences.

Abstract: Nanoscale materials are attractive building blocks for a broad range of emerging technologies due to their unique and often superior properties. However, transforming nanoscale materials into macroscale devices and systems while translating their unique properties from nanoscale to macroscale remains a major challenge due to many scientific and technological obstacles.
This talk will focus on our research on developing versatile and synergistic additive manufacturing and scalable nanomanufacturing methods to manufacture and transform a broad range of emerging nanoscale materials into advanced energy and electronic systems in a highly scalable and intelligent manner. This talk will present our recent research progress on several closely related topics. First, I will present our research on scalable nanomanufacturing to create nanoscale building blocks and printable inks with desired physical property, colloidal stability and printability. Second, I will present our work on developing novel additive, hybrid and autonomous manufacturing methods to fabricate multifunctional and flexible/wearable devices for energy conversion, sensing and health monitoring. Finally, I will talk about innovative thermal processing and sintering methods that enable high-throughput and ultrafast processing of printed semiconducting and metallic nanoparticles on delicate and temperature sensitive materials.