msaeidi's blog

The Advanced Manufacturing and Energy Lab (AMEL) directed by Prof. Yanliang Zhang at the University of Notre Dame (a top 15 University in US) have multiple fully-funded graduate students opening positions with full tuition coverage plus a competitive stipend. The AMEL is working on cutting-edge research topics including additive manufacturing and scalable nanomanufacturing of functional devices, micro/nanoscale thermal science and thermoelectric energy conversion, flexible electronics and advanced sensors.

The effect of simultaneous alignment of polyethylene (PE) lamellae and graphene nanoplatelets (GnP) on thermal conductivity (k) of PE-GnP composites is investigated. Measurements reveal a large increase of 1100% in k of the aligned PE-GnP composite using 10 weight% GnPs relative to unoriented pure PE. Rate of increase of k with applied strain for the pure PE-GnP composite with 10 wt% GnP is found to be almost a factor of two higher than the pure PE sample, pointing to the beneficial effect of GnP alignment on k enhancement.