Events

Abstract

Energy and water are foundational to modern society, yet the sustainable storage, conversion, and management of these resources remain among the most urgent global challenges. Over the past decade, we have developed hydrogels as a transformative materials platform for sustainable energy–water technologies, demonstrating that these soft materials, traditionally associated with biomedical applications, can be reimagined to address critical challenges across the Water-Energy-Food Nexus.

This seminar will introduce an emerging class of nanostructured multifunctional hydrogels that feature hierarchically porous architectures and tunable size, shape, composition, internal structures and chemical interfaces. Enabled by versatile gelation chemistries and modular molecular building blocks, these materials exhibit intrinsic 3D micro-/nanostructured conducting frameworks, exceptional electrochemical activity for efficient ion storage and transport, and synthetically programmable polymer–water interactions.

We will highlight the design principles and structure–property–function relationships that underpin this soft-materials paradigm and illustrate how structure-derived multifunctionality enables solutions to frontier challenges in sustainable energy and water technologies.

About the Speaker

Guihua Yu is the John J. McKetta Centennial Energy Chair Professor of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, and a core faculty member of Texas Materials Institute and UT Energy Institute. His research broadly focuses on the creative synthesis and self-assembly of functional organic and hybrid nanomaterials, as well as the fundamental understanding of their unique chemical and physical properties to address frontier challenges in advanced energy, environmental and sustainability technologies.