Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells often underperform due to high overpotentials caused by sluggish kinetics. Specifically, the Pt-catalyzed oxygen reduction reaction at the cathode renders the energy efficiency well below the thermodynamic limit.
Engineers at the Zhenan Bao Lab have developed an elastic Li-ion conductor with dual covalent and dynamic hydrogen bonding crosslinks providing high mechanical resilience without sacrificing the room temperature ionic conductivity.
Stanford researchers at the Bao Lab have designed and fabricated a highly stretchable, tough, and self-healable material with high fatigue resistance applicable for electronic (e-) skin devices.
Stanford researchers developed a 'self-healing' polymer coating that conforms to and stabilizes lithium metal battery electrodes. The polymer is an extremely stretchy, flexible and adaptive protective layer.
Stanford researchers developed a strong, flexible, high heat transfer architecture for electronics packaging interfacial material. The resins currently used in electronics packaging are a thermal management bottleneck.
Stanford researchers have developed a simple and effective method to sort semiconducting from metallic single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT). This scalable technique uses semiconducting polymers to wrap around individual semiconducting SWNTs dispersed in a solution.
Hydrogel-based tissue engineering scaffolds are widely used for culturing cells in three dimensions (3D) due to their tissue-like water content, tunable biochemical and physical properties, and ease of cell encapsulation and distribution in 3D.
Stanford researchers have developed a versatile molecular engineering approach, via random copolymerization, to gain good processability while maintaining high charge transport and photovoltaic performance for conjugated copolymers.
Stanford and IBM researchers have recently patented methods for making a new class of multi-branched macromolecules with well-defined molecular weights and surface structures.