15th annual international

15th Annual International Electromaterials Science Symposium 3 – 5 February 2021

University of Wollongong

Deakin University

Monash University

University of Tasmania

Australian National University

University of Melbourne

Swinburne University of Technology

La Trobe University

Dublin City University

Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen

Hanyang University

University of Warwick

Yokohama National University

Thank you to our generous Poster Session sponsor

Material Testing and Electrochemistry

Single and Multi-Channel Potentiostats

www.prodigitek.com [email protected]

PO BOX KL806 , Kings Langley NSW 2147 Ph:02 96744222

Symposium Program

15th Annual Electromaterials Symposium Program DRAFT Program

Wednesday 3rd – Friday 5th February 2021 All Times Listed are Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT)

Day 1: Wednesday 3rd February 2021

Session 1 - Chair: Prof Jenny Pringle

1:25pm Dial into Zoom - https://uow-au.zoom.us/j/98307117754 Password - 523706

1:30pm Professor Gordon Wallace, ACES Director: Opening Remarks

1.40pm Professor Liming Dai, University of New South Wales, Australia (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Carbon-Based Catalysts for Metal-Free Electrocatalysis

2.00pm Professor John Madden, University of British Colombia, Canada (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Soft Sensors: Robot skin and Piezoionics

2:20pm Professor Zaiping Guo, University of Wollongong, Australia (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Development of Aqeous Zinc-Ion Batteries with Long Cycle Stability

2:40pm Professor Debbie Silvester-Dean, Curtin University, Australia (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Poly(ionic liquids) as Electrochemical Sensor Materials

3.00pm Dr Cristina Pozo-Gonzalo, Deakin University, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Electrolyte/Electrode Interface in Sodium-O2 Batteries

3:15pm Professor Simon Moulton, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Ultra-Low Fouling Electrodes

3:30pm Break

Session 2 - Chair: A/Prof Jeremy Crook

3:50pm Professor Linda Hancock, Deakin University, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Markets, Materials and Ethics: Lithium and Solar

4:05pm Dr Eva Tomaskovic-Crook, University of Wollongong, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Building Electric Tissues Using Advanced Wireless Electrostimulation

4:20pm Professor Matthias Driess, Technical University of Berlin (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) How to Boost Electrocatalysts for Chemical Energy Storage by a Soft Molecular Precursor Approach

4:40pm Professor David Mecerreyes, POLYMAT (Basque Center for Macromolecular Design & Engineering), Spain (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Design of Polymeric Corrosion Inhibitors based on Ionic Coumarate Groups

5:00pm Day 1 Finish

Day 2: Thursday 4th February 2021

9:00am to 11:00am

Virtual Theme Meetings (Arranged and Hosted by Theme Leaders – INTERNAL TO ACES ONLY)

Special Session 1 – Chair: Prof Gordon Wallace

11:00am – 12:00pm

Panel Session – Positioning Research for Translation with Paul Barrett (IP Group), Dr Charlie Day (Jupiter Ionics Pty Ltd), Prof Maria Skyllas-Kazacos (University of New South Wales) and Dr Pia Winberg (Venus Shell Systems)

Session 3 – Chair: Dr Eva Tomaskovic-Crook

1.55pm Dial into Zoom - https://uow-au.zoom.us/j/98307117754 Password - 523706

2:00pm Associate Professor Carmel Majidi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Soft-Matter Engineering for Robotics and Wearables

2:20pm Prof Seon Jeong Kim, Hanyang University, South Korea (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Self-Powered Carbon Nanotube Yarn Article Muscle

2:40pm Emma James, University of Wollongong, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Direct Piezoelectricity for Neural and Cardiac Tissue Bioengineering

2:55pm Prof Michael Higgins, University of Wollongong, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Understanding Cell-Material Interactions, One Molecule at a Time

3:10pm Prof Jenny Pringle, Deakin University, Australia (10 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Development of New Solid and Liquid Electrolytes by Tailoring the Cation, Anion and Molecular Structure

3:25pm Break

Session 4 - Chair: Dr Chong Yong Lee

3:40pm Dr Vini Gautam, University of Melbourne, Australia (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Semiconducting Nanowires for Neural Tissue Engineering

4:00pm Professor Robert Forster, Dublin City University, Ireland (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) 3D Electrodes for Electrochemiluminescence and Electrocatalysis

4:20pm Professor Peter Strasser, Technical University of Berlin, Germany (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) Electrolytic Hydrogen Production from Purified and Saline Water: From Electrocatalytic Fundamentals to Electrolyzer Cell Designs

4:40pm Professor George Malliaras, University of Cambridge, UK (15 min talk + 5 min Q&A) – Electronics on the Brain

5:00pm Day 2 Finish

Day 3: Friday 5th February 2021

ACES Showcase

9:30am – 11:00am ACES Symposium Poster Session, sponsored by ProDigitek

Special Session 2 – Chair: Prof Jenny Pringle

11:00am – 12:00pm

Panel Session – Careers in Research with Prof Debbie Silvester (Curtin University), Prof Susan Dodds (La Trobe University) and Prof John Madden (University of British Columbia)

Session 1 – Chair: Prof David Officer

1:55pm Dial into Zoom - https://uow-au.zoom.us/j/98307117754 Password - 523706

2:00pm Welcome and Introduction Professor Gordon Wallace, ACES Director

2:10pm

Electromaterials - Theme Leader: Professor David Officer • Dr Pawel Wagner – University of Wollongong (7 min): Working with MOF Interfaces • Dr Faezeh Makhlooghi Azad – Deakin University (7 min): Thermal and Transport

Properties of a Novel Zwitterion-Based Electrolytes • Dmitrii Rakov – Deakin University (7 min): Molecular Level Electrode/Electrolyte

Interface Engineering with High-Salt Contained Ionic Liquids for the Optimization of Metal Anode Battery Performance

2:35pm

Electrofluidics and Diagnostics - Theme Leader: Professor Brett Paull • Dr Arushi Manchanda – University of Tasmania (7 min): Direct Analysis of Swabbed

Samples Using Thread-Based Analytical Systems • Liang Chen – University of Tasmania (7 min): Thread-Based Isotachophoresis Clean-

Up and Trapping of Alkaloids using Nanoparticle Modified Thread followed by DESI-MS Analysis

• Liang Wu – University of Wollongong (7 min): A Nylon Fibre-Based Isotachophoresis Microfluidic Approach for Isolation and Concentration of Nucleic Acids

3:00pm

Soft Robotics - Theme Leader: Professor Gursel Alici • Hao Zhou - University of Wollongong (7 min): A 3D-Printed Soft Robotic Prosthetic

Hand with Embedded Soft Sensors to Improve Pattern Recognition Based Myoelectric Control

• Gerardo Gurrola Montoya - University of Wollongong (7 min): Adaptive Neural Interface to Control Prosthetic Devices: Design, Fabrication and Performance Evaluation (Update)

• Hong Quan Le - University of Wollongong (7 min): Improving Usability, Intuitiveness of Controlling Prosthetic Hand via Non-Invasive Approach

3:25pm Break

Session 2 – Chair: Prof Maria Forsyth

3:35pm

Synthetic Energy Systems - Theme Leader: Professor Doug Macfarlane • Dr Irina Simonova – Monash University (7 min): Li-Mediated Ammonia

Electrosynthesis in a Two-Electrode System at Ambient Temperate: A Cell Design • Linbo Li – Monash University (7 min): Decoupled Hydrophobic Framework for Long-

Acting Conversion of CO2 to ethylene • Ghulam Murtaza Panhwar – Deakin University (7 min): Development of New Redox

Electrolytes for Thermal Energy Harvesting Device

4:00pm

Synthetic Bio Systems - Theme Leader: Professor Mark Cook • Dr Saimon Silva – Swinburne University (7 min): Does Reduction of Liquid Crystal

Graphene Improve its Electrochemical Properties? • Dr Zhi Chen – University of Wollongong (7 min): Building Biomimetic Human Cornea

using Electro-Compacted Collagen • Chunyan Qin – University of Wollongong (7 min): Bipolar Electroactive Conducting

Polymers for Wireless Cell Stimulation

4:25pm

Ethics Policy Public Engagement - Theme Leader: Professor Susan Dodds • Dr Mary Walker – La Trobe University (7 min): Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Based

Systems for Personalising Epilepsy Treatment: Research Ethics Challenges and New Insights for Personalised Medicine Ethics

• Linda Wollersheim – Deakin University (7 min): Marginalised by Big Grid Energy? The Impact of Policy Barriers on Mid-Scale Renewables Projects

4:45pm ACES Symposium Poster Competition Awards, sponsored by ProDigitek

4:50pm Closing Remarks Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer and Natural Resources Commissioner

5:00pm Day 3 Finish

5:15pm IAC Virtual Meeting (By Invitation Only)

Invited Speakers Biographies & Abstracts

Liming Dai

Liming Dai joined University of New South Wales (UNSW) in early 2020 as an Australian Laureate Fellow, Scientia Professor, and SHARP Professor. He is also Director of the Australian Carbon Materials Centre (A-CMC). Before joining UNSW, he spent 10 years with CSIRO (1992-2002) and was an associate professor of polymer at the University of Akron (2002-2004), the Wright Brothers Institute Endowed Chair Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Dayton (2004-2009), and the Kent Hale Smith Professor in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University (2009-2019). He has published more than 500 referred papers with citations 88,888 and an h-index of 148 (Google Scholar). He is a ‘Highly Cited Researchers’ (Materials, Chemistry) and most recently receiving the 2019 IUMRS-Somiya Award from the International Union of Materials Research Societies, and the 2019 Australian Laureate Fellowship. He serves as an Associate Editor of Nano Energy, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials.

Carbon-Based Catalysts for Metal-Free Electrocatalysis

Liming Dai

School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Email: [email protected]

Among the numerous electrocatalytic reactions, the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are critical for clean and renewable energy technologies. While these reactions show great promise toward solving global energy and environmental challenges, they normally require noble-metal-based catalysts (e.g., Pt, Pd, RuO2, IrO2). The high cost of precious metal-based catalysts and their limited reserve have precluded these renewable energy technologies from large-scale applications. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop alternative catalysts with superior electrocatalytic performance, compared to noble-metal-based catalysts, and are also readily available and cost effective with additional potential attributes beyond those of current-generation metal catalysts.

In 2009, we demonstrated that nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) could be used as heteroatom-doped metal-free carbon electrocatalysts to replace Pt for the ORR in fuel cells. The improved catalytic performance was attributed to the doping-induced charge transfer from carbon atoms adjacent to the nitrogen atoms to change the chemisorption mode of O2 and to readily attract electrons from the anode for facilitating the ORR. More recent studies have further demonstrated that certain heteroatom/defect-doped carbon nanomaterials could act as multifunctional metal-free electrocatalysts for ORR/OER in metal-air batteries for energy storage, ORR/OER/HER for self-powered water-splitting to generate hydrogen fuel and oxygen gas from water, and even CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to directly convert CO2 into fuel, leading to a large variety of low-cost, highly-efficient and multifunctional electrocatalysts for clean and renewable energy technologies.

In this talk, I will summarize some of our work on the carbon-based catalysts for metal-free electrocatalysis in various energy-related reactions, along with an overview on the recent advances and perspectives in this exciting field.

Zaiping Guo

Prof. Zaiping Guo received a PhD in Materials Engineering from the University of Wollongong in December 2003. She was an APD Fellow at University of Wollongong, where she continued as a group leader from 2007. She is a Distinguished Professor in the school of Mechanical, Materials, Mechatronic, and Biomedical Engineering, University of Wollongong. Her research focuses on the design and application of nanomaterials for energy storage and conversion, including rechargeable batteries, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells. She published more than 450 papers in peer-reviewed Journals, more than 200 papers were published in journals with IF > 10, and these publications have been cited >27,270 times with an h-index of 89. Her research achievements have been recognised through numerous awards, including an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in 2010, an ARC Future Professorial Fellowship in 2015, and the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher Award in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Development of aqueous zinc-ion batteries with long cycle stability

Junnan Hao, Xiaohui Zeng, Jianfeng Mao, Zaiping Guo*

Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials, Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, School of Mechanical, Materials, Mechatronic, and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Information

Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia


Owing to the high capacity of the metallic Zn anode and intrinsically safe aqueous electrolyte, aqueous zinc ion batteries are very attractive energy storage technology alternatives beyond lithium-ion batteries, providing a cost benefit, high safety, and competitive energy density. There has been a new wave of research interest across the family of Zn batteries, however, zinc ion batteries still suffer from limited cycle life and low capacity, and the fundamental understanding of the Zn electrode and its performance improvement still remain inconclusive. In this talk, I will present some of our recent progress in the development of advanced aqueous zinc ion batteries via the introduction of electrolyte additives, employing high concentration electrolytes, and building artificial solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layers.

John Madden

John’s work on conducting polymers, carbon nanotubes, hydrogels, and soft elastomers, including applications in artificial muscle, energy storage, solar energy harvesting and soft robotics, matches the interests of the ACES team with whom he has worked for many years. His team’s recent excursion into Bionics is seeking methods of mending the spinal cord after injury, inspired by the Bionics theme at Wollongong. John is the director of the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory at the University of British Columbia, a multidisciplinary materials research centre. He is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Associate Member of the School of Biomedical Engineering. Before joining UBC, John obtained his PhD from the BioInstrumentation Laboratory at MIT and was a Research Scientist there.

Soft Sensors: Robot skin and PiezoIonics

John D.W. Madden

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Advanced Materials & Process Engineering laboratory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4 Canada


The drive to make robots dexterous has created a need for tactile feedback – including skin that coats ‘fingers’ and perhaps other parts of the robot’s ‘body’. I present work from my team that uses soft, molded, capacitive sensors to detect proximity, normal force and shear. These pattern the dielectric to improve sensitivity to force. Transparent and stretchable versions that employ ionically conductive gels in place of metals, carbon or indium tin oxide, are also demonstrated. Ionic liquid electrolytes can also act as conductors, be transparent, and they don’t evaporate. Their conductivity is a strong function of temperature – but the capacitive response is not. The ionic conductors turn out to be sensitive to pressure in their own right – when pressed they generate a ‘piezoionic’ voltage, producing currents and potentials that are similar to those of action potentials. In fact, they can even stimulate nerves directly. This opens the possibility of making very soft and unpowered sensor arrays that can interact directly with the nervous system – with some amplification needed if distances are significant, as in our own nervous system.

Dr Cristina Pozo-Gonzalo

Dr. Pozo-Gonzalo works as Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University in Melbourne (Australia). She attained her Degree and honours in the University of Zaragoza (Spain). After graduating, she received her PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) working with Prof. Peter J. Skabara on the electrochemical synthesis of Conducting Polymers. From 2004, she joined the Centre for Electrochemical Technologies in San Sebastian, (Spain) as the Head of Electrooptical unit where she stayed for 7 years, managing a total of 23 projects. After moving to Australia, she has been working with Prof. Alan Bond at Monash University and in 2012 she joined Deakin University where she has been working in reversible metal air battery with advanced electrolytes, ionic liquids funded by ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES).

Currently, she leads research on the use of ionic liquid electrolytes for energy storage devices, especially for metal oxygen technologies. In the last years, she has been focusing on circular economy in energy materials and she is presently working on the recovery of critical raw materials from spent batteries using sustainable methods. At Deakin University, she is also a theme champion for energy materials as part of the University’s Circular Economy mission pillar. She is a board member of the Journal Sustainable Chemistry and guest editor of a special issue: “Circular Economy in Energy Storage Materials”.

During her research career, she has authored and co-authored more than 80 peer-review international publications, two book chapter and holds 3 patents.

Electrolyte/Electrode Interface in Sodium-O2 Batteries

Cristina Pozo-Gonzalo, Laura Garcia-Quintana, The An Ha, Patrick C. Howlett

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, 3200, Institute for Frontier Materials (Australia)

e-mail address: [email protected]

The increasing energy demand requires new and sustainable energy storage technologies to meet future needs. Metal-O2 batteries are especially attractive due to their superior specific energy related to the use of a light metallic anode, and the use of oxygen as active materials in the cathode, which is not stored within the battery. Among those chemistries, sodium-oxygen present high specific energy (e.g. 1605 or 1108 Wh kg1, depending on the final discharge product) but also low production cost and the abundance of sodium. Unfortunately, there are still some major drawbacks in Na-air batteries such as electrolyte stability, side reaction products or dendrites growth on the sodium metal.

Ionic liquids are an interesting alternative to common electrolytes, being capable of stabilize the oxygen electrogenerated species, and increase the overall safety in the battery due to their superior electrochemical and thermal stability. Our research has been focused on understanding the impact of the electrolyte chemistry and composition, and the subsequent effect on the discharge products composition and morphology covering ionic liquids and hybrid (glyme: ionic liquids) electrolytes.

Debbie S. Silvester Assoc. Prof. Debbie Silvester is an electrochemist and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences at Curtin University, Perth. She completed her DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford, UK, then spent a short time as an intern for Schumberger Cambridge Research, before arriving at Curtin University as a Curtin Research Fellow. In 2012, she was awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) and in 2017, an ARC Future Fellowship.

She is a recipient of various awards including the 2019 Rennie Memorial Medal from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), a 2019 WA Young Tall Poppy award, the 2017 Peter W. Alexander Medal from the Analytical & Environmental Division of the RACI, the 2013 AM Bond medal from the Electrochemistry Division of the RACI, 2013 finalist for the Woodside Early Career Researcher of the Year (WA Science Awards). Currently, she is the secretary for the Electrochemistry Division of the RACI, the Australia/New Zealand representative for the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), and is a member of the editorial board for Scientific Reports and Frontiers in Chemistry.

Poly(ionic liquids) as Electrochemical Sensor Materials

Debbie S. Silvester,1 Simon Doblinger,1 Catherine E. Hay,1 Liliana Tomé,2 David Mecerreyes2

1School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. 2Institute for Polymer Materials (POLYMAT), University of the Basque Country, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain


Poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) are polyelectrolytes that combine the promising characteristics of ionic liquids – intrinsic conductivity, chemical and thermal stability, wide electrochemical windows, tunability of the structure – and the physical stability of polymers. They have been employed for various applications, and are quite widely used as membranes for efficient gas sorption and separation and in flexible electronics. PILs have also been employed in electrochemical sensors, but their use in amperometric gas sensors has not yet been discussed.

In this presentation, I will describe the applicability of PIL/ionic liquid (IL) mixtures as robust materials for amperometric gas sensing using oxygen and sulfur dioxide as analytes. Different mixing ratios of the PIL with the IL were investigated to find the right balance that gives adequate robustness, conductivity and sensitivity. The voltametric behaviour of oxygen and sulfur dioxide at different concentrations show linear calibration graphs and excellent limits of detection, despite the more viscous (gel-type) electrolytes having increased viscosities. The potential windows are also explored, revealing that these PIL/IL mixtures are suitable for the sensing of different redox active species over a wide potential range. Overall, these materials show much promise for use as electrolytes in highly robust amperometric gas sensing devices.

Professor Simon E. Moulton Prof Moulton obtained his PhD from the University of Wollongong (UoW) in 2002. He then worked (Dec 2002 – Dec 2014) in numerous research positions within the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials. In December 2014 he was recruited by Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) Melbourne to a strategic appointment of Professor of Biomedical Electromaterials Science. He also holds an Honorary Professor position within the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM) and IPRI at UoW. He is Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) and ACES Node Leader at SUT where he manages research activities undertaken within the Synthetic Biosystems and Electrofluidics and Diagnostics programs. He is the Bioengineering Program Leader of SUT’s Iverson Health Innovation Research Institute. He has published over 130 manuscripts, has a h-index of 47 with approx. 6200 citations and has been awarded over $30 million in research funding.

Ultra-low fouling electrodes

Saimon M. Silva, George W. Greene, Pauline E. Desroches, Clayton S. Manasa, Jessair Dennaoui, Mathew J. Russo, Mingyu Han, Anita F. Quigley, Robert M. I. Kapsa and Simon E. Moulton

Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Vic, Australia

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Vic, Australia

Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD), St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic, Australia

Iverson Health Innovation Research Institute, Swinburne University of Technology, Vic, Australia

Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia


The ability to prevent or minimize the accumulation of unwanted biological materials (fouling) on electrode surfaces is important in maintaining their long-term function. To address this issue there has been a focus on materials, both biological and synthetic, that have the potential to prevent device fouling. In this presentation, I will highlight some of our group’s work where we have developed an efficient anti-fouling surface that employs the glycoprotein, lubricin (LUB), and which generates low impedance layers compatible with electrochemical applications. We have also evaluated the ability of LUB to attached to a wide range of surfaces as well as its ability to form anti-fouling layers whilst maintaining stable electrochemical performance of electrodes in simulated body fluids. The size selective anti-fouling properties (Figure 1) of LUB will be discussed in the context of implantable electrodes as well as sensors. Figure 1. Schematic illustrating the size-selective transport properties of the LUB, telechelic brush coating. The size-selective transport properties are derived from the very low chain density of the LUB “mucin domain” loops (>95% water) and the low surface coverage of the adhered end domain regions on the surface (<15%) that leaves most of the electrode exposed to the solution. (Copyright: Adv. Mater. Inter. 2018, 5, 1701296)

Prof. Linda Hancock

Professor Linda Hancock is a Chief Investigator of ACES in the Ethics, Policy and Public Engagement (EPPE) team at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterial Science (ACES). She was appointed Professor in Public Policy at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Current roles include IPCC report reviews and Director on a wind farm about to embark on 5MW of solar.

• International Reviewer: First and Second Order Drafts (FOD) of the Working Group II (WGII) Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) on Climate Change Adaptation[2019-2021]

• Reviewer of the First and Second Order Draft (FOD) of the Working Group III (WGIII) Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).[2020-2021]

• Director, Board of Hepburn Wind now Hepburn Energy (current)

Markets, Minerals and Ethics: Lithium and Solar

Prof. Linda Hancock

ACES EPPE Deakin University


For decades Australia has been a “quarry” oriented to extractive industry raw materials exports and not a nation pursuing strategic resource nationalism and vertically integrated energy product/device manufacturing export industries. Why is this so and what does the shifting momentum internationally towards renewable energy mean for RE in Australia and RE researchers? How can research be more closely coupled to future minrals resource strengths? What are the risks and the unknowns? How can circular economy be a driver rather than a post hoc accounting, public relations offset?

Researchers want to back winners. How can we understand how minerals/RE product markets work, so as to position research and innovation for commercial success, and to make a difference to sustainability of the planet?

The paper has three main sections.

1. The social construction of markets in minerals. Can such markets be ethical? Why does fossil fuel resource nationalism prevail in Australia, even when other major economies internationally, finance and insurance and major investor funds are moving out of fossil fuels in support of renewables?

2. What accounts for the volatility in lithium markets globally and in Australia? 3. How are solar PV markets structured?

How can research be more closely coupled to future resource strengths? What ethical/governance rules would be facilitative? What are the risks and the known unknowns? How can circular economy be a driver rather than a post hoc accounting, public relations offset?

.

Eva Tomaskovic-Crook

Dr Eva Tomaskovic-Crook is a Research Fellow within the Synthetic Biosystems theme of ACES at the University of Wollongong. Eva’s research brings together front-line technologies human stem cells with cell instructive bio- and electro-materials for next generation tissue building. Her approach includes novel 3D-printing, stem-cell derived organoidogenesis, and conventional and wireless electrostimulation, particularly for neural tissue engineering and application – including drug/toxicity testing, medical device development, disease diagnostics, tissue replacement therapy, and regenerative medicine.

Eva’s work within ACES is enabling her to apply and further develop her experience and interests in human cell biology, neurobiology, biomaterials, and electro-/pharmaceuticals research. Recent highlights include the development of a novel method for generating human brain organoids and an innovative platform for creating human neural tissues by 3D electrical stimulation of stem cells.

Building Electric Tissues Using Advanced Wireless Electrostimulation

Eva Tomaskovic-Crook, Sam JC Rathbone, Emma C James, Sky Jay, Jeremy M Crook

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, 2500 Wollongong, Australia

Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong, 2500 Wollongong, Australia


Endogenous electric fields are important in the physiology and development of human tissues such as embryonic and fetal development, and tissue regeneration for wound healing. Accordingly, electrical stimulation (ES) is increasingly being applied to influence cell behaviour and function for a biomimetic approach to in vitro cell culture and tissue engineering. Wireless ultrasound-mediated direct piezoelectric-stimulation (USPZ), whereby ultrasound energy is converted to electrical charge, is an emergent neural interface technology for neural stimulation with promising clinical application. Building on our initial studies of USPZ of human neural stem cells, we have developed a proprietary electrically conductive biogel comprising piezoelectric nanoparticles to wirelessly and electrically stimulate tissues to augment human tissue building for advanced modelling and replacement therapy. The technology may be applied for both research and translational interventions, including modelling neurological and non-neurological tissue development and (dys)function, drug augmentation, electroceuticals and regenerative medicine.

Matthias Driess Matthias Driess is a full professor of metalorganics and inorganic materials at the Department of Chemistry of Technische Universität Berlin in Germany since 2005. He obtained his PhD degree and completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He serves as a deputy of the Cluster of Excellence UniSysCat and is a Director of the UniSysCat-BASF SE joint lab BasCat, and of the Chemical Invention Factory (CIF) for Start-ups in Green Chemistry. He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the European Academy of Sciences.

For details see: https://www.metallorganik.tu-berlin.de/menue/home/parameter/en/

How to Boost Electrocatalysts for Chemical Energy Storage by a Soft Molecular Precursor Approach

Matthias Driess, Prashanth W. Menezes, Shenglai Yao

Technical University of Berlin, Department of Chemistry: Metalorganics and Inorganic Materials, Secr. C2, Strasse des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin (Germany)


Using suitable molecular precursors for functional inorganic nanomaterial synthesis allows for reliable control over composition and uniform particle size distribution, which can help to reach desired chemical and physical properties. In my talk I would like to outline advantages and challenges of the molecular precursor approach in light of selected recent developments of molecule-to-nanostructured materials synthesis for renewable energy applications, relevant for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and overall water-splitting. Electrochemical water-splitting into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) is widely regarded as a promising approach to producing environmentally-friendly fuels for energy supply. In the recent years, inexpensive, earth-abundant and environmentally benign main-group- and transition-metal-containing materials such as chalcogenides, pnictides and other functional materials in conjunction with semiconducting co-catalysts that can independently catalyze OER and HER have been established. Still a main hurdle towards technological use on a large scale is to provide reliable catalyst systems for HER, OER and overall water-splitting which are not ‘only’ efficient but also robust and long-term stable in a variable pH range under harsh reaction conditions, at least for several months without losing activity.

Prof. David Mecerreyes

PhD in polymer chemistry by the University of Liege (Belgium) in 1998. Then he carried out a post-doctoral stay at IBM Almaden Research Center and Stanford University in California. Back to Spain he worked for 10 years in CIDETEC. In 2011 he became Ikerbasque Research Professor at POLYMAT (www.polymat.eu), University of the Basque Country. Since then he coordinates the Innovative Polymers Group and acts as scientific vice-director of POLYMAT. His research interests include the synthesis of innovative polymers for energy and bioelectronics. In particular his team is dedicated to polymer chemistry of innovative redox polymers, poly(ionic liquid)s, iongels and conducting polymers. He is co-author of more than 320 scientific articles. Co-founder of the start-up company POLYKEY.

http://www.polymat.eu/en/groups/innovative-polymers-group

https://polykey.eu

Design of Polymeric Corrosion Inhibitors based on Ionic Coumarate Groups

Esther Udabe, Anthony Somers, Maria Forsyth, and David Mecerreyes

POLYMAT University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Donostia-San Sebastian 20018, Spain;

IKERBASQUE Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain


Efficient, environmentally friendly organic corrosion inhibitors are being sought in order to mitigate the economic loss caused by mild-steel corrosion. In this presentation we will discuss several synthetic strategies for developing monomeric ionic coumarate corrosion inhibitors and their integration into polymer coatings. First, we investigated how the chemical structure of the coumarate monomeric inhibitors affected its performance as molecular corrosion inhibitor. The corrosion inhibition performance on a mild steel AS1020 surface of the three coumarate compounds when added to a chloride contaminated aqueous solution was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and surface analyses. Secondly, we investigated the introduction of the monomers including coumarate groups into acrylic-UV polymer coatings with excellent anti-corrosion properties. This presentation herein will show that, the design of polymeric corrosion inhibitors which combine the barrier properties of the polymer coating and the anticorrosion effect of the organic inhibitor is a powerful strategy against corrosion.

References

1. E. Udabe, M. Forsyth, A. Sommers, D. Mecerreyes “Metal-free coumarate based ionic liquids and poly(ionic liquid)s as corrosion inhibitors” Mater. Adv. 2020, 1, 584-589

2. E. Udabe, M. Forsyth, A. Sommers, D. Mecerreyes “Cation Effect in the corrosion Inhibition Properties of coumarate ionic liquids and acrylic UV-Coatings” Polymers 2020, 12, 2611

3. E. Udabe, M. Forsyth, A. Sommers, D.Mecerreyes “Design of Polymeric Corrosion Inhibitors based on Ionic Coumarate Groups” submitted 2021.

Carmel Majidi

Carmel Majidi is the Clarence H. Adamson Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Soft Machines Lab. His lab is dedicated to the discovery of novel material architectures that allow machines and electronics to be soft, elastically deformable, and biomechanically compatible. Currently, his research is focused on fluid-filled elastomers that exhibit unique combinations of mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties and can function as “artificial” skin, nervous tissue, and muscle for soft robotics and wearables. Carmel has received grants from industry and federal agencies along with early career awards from DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, and NASA to explore challenges in soft-matter engineering and robotics. Prior to arriving at CMU, Prof. Majidi had postdoctoral appointments at Harvard and Princeton Universities and received his PhD in Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

Soft-Matter Engineering for Robotics & Wearables

Carmel Majidi

Carnegie Mellon University

Progress in soft lithography and soft materials integration have led to extraordinary new classes of soft-matter sensors, circuits, and transducers. These material technologies are composed almost entirely out of soft matter – elastomers, gels, and conductive fluids like eutectic gallium-indium (EGaIn) – and represent the building blocks for machines and electronics that are soft, flexible, and stretchable. Because of their intrinsic compliance and elasticity, such devices can be incorporated into soft, biologically-inspired robots or be worn on the body and operate continuously without impairing natural body motion. In this talk, I will review recent contributions from my research group in creating soft multifunctional materials for wearable electronics and soft robotics using these emerging practices in “soft-matter engineering.” In particular, I will focus on elastomer composites and microfluidic EGaIn architectures for highly stretchable digital electronics, wearable energy harvesting, and electrically-responsive actuation. When possible, I will relate the design and operation of these soft-matter technologies to underlying principles of soft matter physics and practices in controls and machine. In addition to presenting my own research in the field, I will also briefly review broader efforts and emerging challenges in utilizing soft electronic materials for applications in wearable electronics and soft robotics.

Prof. Seon Jeong Kim

Prof Seon Jeong Kim is HYU Distinguished Professor at Hanyang University and Director of National Creative Research Initiative Center for Self-Powered Actuation in Korea. His research has focused on artificial muscle as a biomimetic system; the fabrication of materials that can be driven by power sources and the investigation into artificial muscle system that can control the contraction and relaxation of artificial muscle, and on self-powered system like sensors, energy harvesters, and storages. He has published more 200 peer-reviewed papers in the area of biomedical engineering and nanotechnology.

Homepage: hattp://nbt.hanyang.ac.kr

Self-Powered Carbon Nanotube Yarn Artificial Muscle

Seon Jeong Kim

HYU Distinguished Professor, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea

Director, National Creative Research Initiative Center for Self-Powered Actuation in Korea

E-mail: [email protected]

Artificial muscle is materials or devices that can be driven by an external stimulus as a reversible movement. Carbon nanotube artificial muscles using contraction, relaxation, bending, or rotation and powered by electricity, light, or heat are well known. Here, carbon nanotube yarn energy harvesters which electrochemically convert tensile or torsional mechanical energy directly into electrical energy. Unlike other harvesters, torsional rotation results in both tensile and torsional energy harvesting and no bias voltage is required, even when electrochemically operating in sea water. Since homochiral and heterochiral coiled harvester yarns provide oppositely directed potential changes when stretched, both electrodes contribute to output power in a solid-state, dual-electrode yarn. The harvesters are scalable in output energy per cycle to the micron diameters needed for harvesting energy in textiles, and arrays of individual small diameter harvesters would provide effectively unlimited upwards scalability in output power. Use of the tensile energy harvesters as self-powered sensors and as artificial-muscle-powered converters of temperature fluctuations to electrical energy are demonstrated. Future applications of the harvesters might result from their high gravimetric power densities, the giant stroke, the broad frequency range, their operation in other electrolytes without need for an external bias potential, and their scalability from micron-scale-diameter harvesters.

Emma C. James

Emma is a second year PhD student at the University of Wollongong. Emma obtained a Bachelor of Medical and Health Science (Honours I) (Dean’s Scholar) also at the University of Wollongong with her honours project focusing on electrical stimulation for neural tissue engineering and remodelling. For her PhD project she is extending this research by investigating the effects of electrical stimulation for cardiac tissue engineering.

Direct Piezoelectricity for Neural and Cardiac Tissue Bioengineering

Emma C. James, Eva Tomaskovic-Crook, Jeremy M. Crook

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, 2500 Wollongong, Australia

[email protected]

Directed differentiation methods allow acquisition of high-purity neural and cardiac tissue derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) which has demonstrated enormous potential for patient-specific, regenerative medicine strategies. However, the immature characteristics of hiPSC-derived tissue remains a significant issue for the field. Electrical stimulation has the potential to augment the induction and function of hiPSC-derived tissue, in particular when combined with 3D cell culture systems. Our proprietary ultrasound-mediated direct piezoelectric (USPZ) stimulation combines high spatial resolution with wireless technology, offering a novel approach to in vitro and in vivo cell stimulation. The technology has a wide range of applications in addition to neural and cardiac tissue engineering including wireless stimulation for restoring damaged tissue and augmented pharmacotherapeutics. We have shown that 3D USPZ provides a workable platform for augmenting 3D neuronal and cardiac induction, as well as proof of concept for other tissue engineering and modelling purposes. The translational applications of physiologically relevant 3D neural and cardiac tissue include disease modelling, drug discovery and cell therapy for regenerative medicine.

Michael Higgins Prof. Michael Higgins is based in the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, University of Wollongong, Australia, and currently a Professorial Fellow and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and previously awarded an ARC Australia Research Fellowship. He is a chief investigator on both the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials and ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub. He has ~ 130 publications and 4556 citations, with h-index of 37, and his work features in journals such as Materials Today, Biomaterials, Advanced Functional Materials, JACS, PRL, Small, Chemistry of Materials, ACS Nano, Nanoletters and Nature Communications. His research focuses on development of surfaces, materials and coatings for biomedical, environmental and industrial applications, with an underlying theme of understanding how biological systems interact with artificial materials. The research contributes to our understanding of interactions and forces in biology, particularly the molecular mechanisms by which living cells recognize and adhere to surfaces. Current applications include biomaterials, blood contact surfaces, antifouling and antimicrobials and are critically dependent on understanding and controlling interactions at the biological-material interface such as protein adsorption and cell adhesion. Thus, the research has developed extensive protocol and techniques based on bio-atomic force microscopy and various other scanning probe microscopies to directly measure single molecule and cell interactions with chemically modified surfaces and materials under development.

Understanding Cell – Material Interactions, One Molecule at a Time.

Michael J. Higgins

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia


The force sensing complexes of living cells, comprising integrins, focal adhesions and interconnected intracellular proteins, are inherently structured at the nanoscale (e.g. single integrins) through to microscale (e.g. focal adhesions) and single cell level. In particular, the nanoscale sensing capabilities of cells are essential for controlling the response of cells to materials. Complex surfaces and materials, including polymers and biomaterials, show heterogeneous properties on the nanoscale yet the effects of their interactions with cell surface molecules distributed on an equivalent length scale are not well understood. For example, the bulk chemistry or modulus of a material substrate may not adequately describe the contributions from the nanoscale, e.g. single chain properties, which may have significant effects on the cell-material interactions. Here, we will present approaches based on Single Cell Force Spectroscopy (see Figure) that is used to directly probe single molecule dynamics, interactions and forces of single living cells at material surfaces. We highlight experimental studies on directly measuring the cell adhesion forces on various materials, including chemically modified silica nanoparticles, conducting polymers, piezoelectric polymers and hydrogels.

Prof Jenny Pringle

Prof Jenny Pringle works in the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University, Melbourne. She is a chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and in the Industrial Transformation Training Centre “StorEnergy”. She received her degree and PhD at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland before moving to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2002. From 2008-2012 she held an ARC QEII Fellowship, investigating the use of ionic electrolytes for dye-sensitized solar cells. Prof Pringle moved to Deakin University in 2013. There she leads research into the development of new ionic liquids and organic ionic plastic crystals for applications including thermal energy harvesting, gas separation membranes, lithium and sodium batteries.

Development of new solid and liquid electrolytes by tailoring the cation, anion and molecular structure

Jenny Pringle, Faezeh Makhlooghiazad, Ruhamah Yunis, Danah Al-Masri, Tony Hollenkamp and Maria Forsyth

Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria 3125, Australia.


It is now well known that the nature of the cations and anions used to make ionic liquid (IL) electrolytes can have a significant impact on their chemical and physical properties. The same is true for organic ionic plastic crystals (OIPCs); these salts are structurally analogous to ILs and but they are solid at room temperature and display dynamics that can allow their use as solid state electrolytes. However, the structure-property relationships are arguably even less well understood in OIPCs.

Furthermore, a new and to-date unexplored family of materials can be created by tethering the cation and anion together to form zwitterions. Zwitterionic materials can exhibit unique characteristics and are tuneable by variation to the covalently bound cationic and anionic moieties. Despite the breadth of properties and potential uses of zwitterions reported to-date, for electrolyte applications they have thus-far primarily been used as additives. However, zwitterions offer intriguing promise as electrolyte matrix materials that are non-volatile, and charged but non-migrating.

This presentation will give an overview of our recent work making new families of non-volatile electrolytes based on ILs, OIPCs and zwitterions. Progress towards understanding the impact of ionic and molecular structure on the electrolyte properties and performance in applications such as lithium metal batteries will be discussed.

Dr Vini Gautam

Dr. Vini Gautam is a lecturer and ARC DECRA fellow in the department of Biomedical Engineering within the Melbourne School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne. Dr Gautam completed her PhD in Materials Science in 2014 from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in India where she developed bionic vision devices based on optoelectronic materials. She then moved to Canberra at the Australian National University and since has been focused on developing nano-scaffolds to engineer the growth of neuronal cells.

Semiconducting nanowires for neural tissue engineering

Vini Gautam

University of Melbourne

[email protected]

In this talk I will demonstrate the use of semiconducting nanowires as topographical cues to guide the formation of functional neural networks. Engineering neuronal circuits on artificial substrates using external parameters provides insights into designing regenerative implants to interface with the nervous system. Here I will present vertically aligned semiconductor nanowires for guiding growth of neural networks in neuronal cell cultures from rodent brains. Our results show that nanowires act as nanoscale topographical cues for neuronal growth, resulting in a directional growth of the processes and highly interconnected neuronal network. Our studies confirm that the alignment of cellular processes along nanowire patterns produces a highly interconnected neural network and correlates with a synchronized activity between cells. I will also present some of the recent insights into the mechanisms behind these observations.

Robert Forster Robert Forster holds a Personal Chair (Full Professor, Physical Chemistry) within the School of Chemical Sciences at Dublin City University and recently completed a term as Director of the National Centre for Sensor Research. In 2020 he was elected to the Royal Irish Academy which is considered the highest academic honour in Ireland. He has served as DCU Dean of Research and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Science and Health with responsibility for research. He was co-author of the successful proposals to establish the National Centre for Sensor Research, the NanoBiophotonics and Imaging Centre, the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, the NanoBioAnalytical Research Facility and the Future Neuro Centre that collectively received more than €60m in funding. He is the author/co-author of more than 250 manuscripts and reviews (H-Index 48, >8,600 citations) and has been a Visiting Scientist to the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. He received the President’s Research Award. Forster’s research focuses on the creation of novel materials that have useful electronic or photonic properties because they are highly ordered on the molecular length scale. These materials, that include surface active transition metal complexes, metallopolymers and nanocavity arrays and metal nanoparticle composites. These materials are rationally designed for applications in molecule-based electronics, display devices and have produced sensors with attomolar limits of detection.

3D Electrodes for Electrochemiluminescence and Electrocatalysis

Samantha Douman, Stephen Beirne, Ellie Stepaniuk, Miren Ruiz De Eguilaz, Gordon G. Wallace, Zhilian Yue, Emmanuel I. Iwuoha, Loanda Cumba and Robert J. Forster

National Centre for Sensor Research, Chemistry Department, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland


3D electrodes can significantly enhance the performance of a wide range of electrochemical processes from highly sensitive electrochemical and electrochemiluminescent detection of disease biomarkers to sustainability challenges such as carbon dioxide reduction. Their advantages over planar electrodes include enhanced mass transport and high surface areas within a small volume. Moreover, in bipolar electrochemistry they open up the possibility of tuning the local electric field strength so as to control the type and rates of electrochemiluminescent reactions.

In this contribution, we discuss the properties of a 3D titanium array for electrochemiluminescence, ECL, generation from ruthenium tris-bpy type systems through both co-reactant and annihilation mechanisms. Significantly, the presence on an oxide layer inhibits water reduction allowing ECL generation in aqueous solutions without the need for a co-reactant through annihilation of electrogenerated [Ru(bpy)3]1+ and [Ru(bpy)3]3+. Moreover, we show that in bipolar or “wireless” electrochemiluminescence, the electric field distribution can be influenced by tailoring the geometry and surface functionalisation of the 3D electrodes. By decorating the porous electrodes with metal nanoparticles, plasmonic enhancement of both the ECL and Raman responses can be achieved. Finally, the application of these novel structures for the electrochemical incineration of water pollutants and the detection of disease biomarkers is discussed.

Professor Peter Strasser

Peter Strasser is the chaired professor of “Electrochemistry and Electrocatalysis” in the Chemical Engineering Division of the Department of Chemistry at the Technical University Berlin. He was Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston, after he served as Senior Member of staff at Symyx Technologies, Inc. He earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry from the ‘Fritz-Haber-Institute’ of the Max-Planck-Society in Berlin under the direction of Gerhard Ertl. He studied chemistry at Stanford University, USA, the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and the University of Pisa, Italy. Professor Strasser was awarded the ISE Brian Conway Prize in Physical Electrochemistry, the IAHE Sir William Grove award, the Otto-Roelen medal in Catalysis by the German Catalysis Society, the Ertl Prize, as well as the Otto-Hahn Research Medal by the Max-Planck Society.

Electrolytic Hydrogen Production from Purified and Saline Water: From Electrocatalytic Fundamentals to Electrolyzer Cell Designs

Peter Strasser

Technical University Berlin, Department of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering Division


Electrocatalysts are critical components of any type of water electrolyzer technology used for the generation of hydrogen from renewable electricity. Successful design and development of viable water electrolyzer electrodes requires fundamental insight into the relation between the atomic-scale chemical structure of the electrified catalytic interface and its catalytic activity, selectivity, and stability. Durable and efficient electrolyzer devices, on the other hand, also require insight in and control of the key transport processes and transport limitations of charge and mass.

In this presentation, I will share recent advances in our understanding and application of water electrolyzer anode electrocatalysts designed to catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), with a focus on catalyst systems for alkaline environments combined with purified and saline water feeds. The discussion will include the preparation, ex-situ and in-situ spectroscopic characterization, mechanistic aspects, as well as the catalytic activity of such OER catalyst systems both in academic screening cells as well as single cell electrolyzers.

George Malliaras

George Malliaras is the Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. He received a PhD from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and did a postdoc at the IBM Almaden Research Center, USA. Before joining Cambridge, he was a faculty member at Cornell University in the USA, where he also served as the Director of the Cornell NanoScale Facility, and at the School of Mines in France. His research has been recognized with awards from the New York Academy of Sciences, the US National Science Foundation, and DuPont, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Linköping in Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society and of the Royal Society of Chemistry and serves as Deputy Editor of Science Advances.

Electronics on the Brain

George Malliaras

Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge


One of the most important scientific and technological frontiers of our time is the interfacing of electronics with the human brain. This endeavour promises to help understand how the brain works and deliver new tools for diagnosis and treatment of pathologies including epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. Current solutions, however, are limited by the materials that are brought in contact with the tissue and transduce signals across the biotic/abiotic interface. Recent advances in flexible electronics have made available materials and devices with a unique combination of attractive properties, including mechanical flexibility, mixed ionic/electronic conduction, enhanced bio-compatibility, integration with microfluidics, and capability for drug delivery. I will present examples of novel devices for recording and stimulation of neurons and show that organic electronic materials offer tremendous opportunities to study the brain and treat its pathologies.

ACES Special Panel Sessions Biographies

Paul Barrett Paul Barrett is an experienced technology executive, working at the cutting edge of science and engineering for two decades, with experience spanning from early-stage technology companies through to large multinationals in the water, materials, energy and pharmaceuticals industries.

Paul currently leads the Physical Scienecs team of investment company IP Group plc (LSE:IPO) in Australia, investing in spin-out companies out of the top universities in Australia and New Zealand.

Prior to joining IP Group, Paul was the co-founder and CTO of AquaHydrex – a company pioneering a new approach to hydrogen production. The company was formed based on intellectual property from the University of Wollongong and Monash University, and Paul helped oversee the company’s growth from University labs to its own state-of-the-art pilot manufacturing facility.

Paul has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University College Dublin and is an inventor on six patents.

Paul Barrett

IP Group Australia


Dr Charles Day Charlie’s passion is advising, investing in and working with teams who are pushing back the boundaries of the possible through innovation, scientific research and commercialisation. He has over 20 years’ experience working in commercial, academic, and policy settings, and has been invited to speak at conferences in these fields in the US, Europe and Asia.

Charlie recently joined the team of the Monash University early-stage spinout Jupiter Ionics Pty Ltd, which is developing a new technology for electrochemical production of Green Ammonia. He also works with a range of early-stage ventures and investors in other advanced technology sectors, including serving on the board of the ANDHealth digital health accelerator and as a mentor and investor at Moonshot Space Accelerator.

Until early 2020 Charlie was the inaugural permanent CEO of the Office of Innovation and Science Australia (OISA), which supports the ISA board. ISA is an independent statutory board of science and innovation practitioners established by the Australian Government with a mandate to provide strategic advice, program oversight, and public advocacy for Australia’s science and innovation system. As part of this role Charlie led the production of a major roadmap for Australian innovation policy, Australia 2030: Prosperity through Innovation.

Prior to that Charlie spent 15 years at the University of Melbourne in a range of roles at the interface between research and business, in addition to several years in strategic and management consulting. Charlie has a degree in Classics and an honours degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Melbourne, along with a doctorate in jet engine design from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He currently lives in Melbourne with his wife and their two sons.

Charles Day

Jupiter Ionics Pty Ltd/Monash University


Maria Skyllas-Kazacos

Maria is currently Emeritus Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney where she continues to supervise research projects in energy storage and aluminium smelting. She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. She pioneered the Vanadium Redox Flow Battery that is currently being commercially manufactured by several companies in Japan, USA, China, UK and Germany and is widely regarded as the most appropriate technology for large-scale energy storage in a wide range of applications.

Maria has over 200 refereed journal papers, more than 40 patents, over 110 conference papers, 4 book chapters and has co-edited 12 books. She has been honoured with several awards:

(i) Whiffen Medal, Institution of Chemical Engineers Australia, 1997 (ii) CHEMECA Medal, Institution of Chemical Engineers Australia, 1998 (iii) Member of the Order of Australia, Australia Day Honours List 1999. (iv) R.K. Murphy Medal, Royal Australian Chemical Institute, 2000 (v) Invested as Lady Commander of the Byzantine Order of St Eugene of Trebizond (Australia Day, 2009) (vi) Castner Medal, Society for the Chemical Industry, UK, 2011 (vii) Lifetime achievement award, International Coalition for Energy Storage and Innovation, 2019

Maria Skyllas-Kazacos

University of New South Wales

Dr. Pia Winberg Pia Winberg has worked across both sustainable marine industry development and academia for over 20 years and has a background is in marine systems ecology. Pia’s main research interest is in marine bio-production systems that are sustainably integrated with the coastal and marine environment. Pia’s published research efforts span aquaculture and coastal ecology, but further extend to applications in marine biotechnology. Pia has developed environmentally friendly, seaweed-cultivation systems for Australia; specifically with a focus on the controlled production of unique, natural-compounds within the seaweed. These compounds are currently being testing in human trials for optimal microbiomes in the gut and wound healing applications. From metabolic processes in the ocean to metabolic and cellular process in humans, a vertical chain of smart, industrial ecology is being developed.

Pia Winberg was the Director of the Shoalhaven Marine and Freshwater Centre at the University of Wollongong from 2008-2013, and is now Founding Director and Chief Scientist of Venus Shell Systems Pty. Ltd. And PhycoHealth. VSS was founded with a commitment to realising the real world applications of this technology, and is achieving a fast pace of scaling towards commercial outcomes. PhycoHealth is the commercial arm delivering marine products to the consumer. VSS and Pia maintain strong ties to academia and continue to support research and young scientists that will drive innovation in this field far into the future. Pia believes that marine farming opportunities from the ocean, if sensitively and ecologically incorporated into the ecosystem, are a necessary way forward to achieving sustainable crop and materials technology for the future. A core aspect of this is the potential for seaweed cultivation for a range of markets ranging from food, health and medical products, agricultural and aquaculture applications.

Pia Winberg

Venus Shell Systems Pty Ltd, University of Wollongong (School of Medicine)


John Madden

John’s work on conducting polymers, carbon nanotubes, hydrogels, and soft elastomers, including applications in artificial muscle, energy storage, solar energy harvesting and soft robotics, matches the interests of the ACES team with whom he has worked for many years. His team’s recent excursion into Bionics is seeking methods of mending the spinal cord after injury, inspired by the Bionics theme at Wollongong. John is the director of the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory at the University of British Columbia, a multidisciplinary materials research centre. He is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Associate Member of the School of Biomedical Engineering. Before joining UBC, John obtained his PhD from the BioInstrumentation Laboratory at MIT and was a Research Scientist there.

John D.W. Madden

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Advanced Materials & Process Engineering laboratory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z4 Canada


Debbie S. Silvester

Assoc. Prof. Debbie Silvester is an electrochemist and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences at Curtin University, Perth. She completed her DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford, UK, then spent a short time as an intern for Schumberger Cambridge Research, before arriving at Curtin University as a Curtin Research Fellow. In 2012, she was awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) and in 2017, an ARC Future Fellowship.

She is a recipient of various awards including the 2019 Rennie Memorial Medal from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), a 2019 WA Young Tall Poppy award, the 2017 Peter W. Alexander Medal from the Analytical & Environmental Division of the RACI, the 2013 AM Bond medal from the Electrochemistry Division of the RACI, 2013 finalist for the Woodside Early Career Researcher of the Year (WA Science Awards). Currently, she is the secretary for the Electrochemistry Division of the RACI, the Australia/New Zealand representative for the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), and is a member of the editorial board for Scientific Reports and Frontiers in Chemistry.

Debbie S. Silvester

1School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. 2Institute for Polymer Materials (POLYMAT), University of the Basque Country, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain


Susan Dodds

Professor Susan Dodds is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Industry Engagement) and Professor of Philosophy at La Trobe University. Her research is in applied ethics and political philosophy and she is recognised nationally and internationally for her leadership in research ethics and public policy development related to emerging medical technologies. At La Trobe University, she provides strategic leadership and oversight of the University’s research and industry engagement activities, research excellence, the graduate research experience, research infrastructure, industry partnerships, research commercialisation and researcher support. After completing her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Toronto, Susan came to La Trobe University to complete her PhD in philosophy. She has held roles at the University of Wollongong, the University of Tasmania (where she was Dean of Arts and Deputy Provost) and the University of New South Wales (where she was Dean of Arts and Social Sciences). She is an active researcher and the leader of the ethics, policy and public engagement theme of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES). She has served on a number of national committees and is also the Chair of the Board of the Australasian Association of Philosophy.

Susan Dodds

La Trobe University

ACES Showcase Speakers Biographies & Abstracts

Pawel Wagner

I have been working with ACES for last 14 years as a senior research fellow. I have been designing and supplying ACES with new electroactive materials for energy storage, photovoltaics, organic electronics, chemical transport and biology.

Working with MOF interfaces

Pawel Wagner, Fatimah Al-Ghazzawi, Lisha Jia, Christopher Richardson and Jun Chena


The interface can be defined as the surface, a common edge between two parts of materials or phases.

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are a relatively new class of crystalline highly porous solid, which can be described as infinite polymeric frameworks consisting from metal ions and organic ligands.

Creating MOF - based interfaces is one of the topics that has been attracting a lot of attention in those materials application. However, MOFs are usually obtained as powders not soluble in solvents and not easily processable. Thus, preparing defect-free MOF films is one of the challenges of the field. In this presentation a three approaches to make MOF films on electrodes, creating a functional interface, will be presented.

Dr. Faezeh Makhlooghiazad

Dr. Faezeh Makhlooghiazad gained her PhD at the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University under supervision of Professor Maria Forsyth in 2018 on development of novel solid-state electrolytes for sodium batteries. She was awarded an Australia Endeavour Fellowship in 2018 to work with Prof. Linda Nazar, a world-leading electrochemist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, to investigate the sodium battery performance of advanced electrodes and solid-state electrolyte. She is currently an associate research fellow at Deakin University within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science on developing solid-state lithium-metal battery technology based on novel solid-state electrolytes. Her main research is aimed at developing ionic liquids, plastic crystals and zwitterions for application in high energy density sodium and lithium batteries.

In 2019, she received the Promising Future Women Leaders Award. In 2020, she was awarded an Early Career Researcher Grant at the ARC Center of Excellence for Electromaterials Science Symposium.

Thermal and transport properties of a novel zwitterion-based electrolytes.

Faezeh Makhlooghiazad, Luke O’Dell, Maria Forsyth and Jenny Pringle,

Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria 3125, Australia

[email protected]

Designing safe electrolytes to eliminate the safety hazards associated with commercial volatile organic solvent-based electrolytes is required to develop next-generation energy storage systems. Ionic liquids (ILs) and organic ionic plastic crystals (OIPCs) mixed with Li salts have been used as electrolytes in electrochemical devices. OIPCs are structurally disordered solids that can possess a high concentration of vacancies within their structure that can encourage fast target ion conduction. However, the ions in the matrix of OIPC compete with the target ion (Li+) migration under potential gradient, which may affect device performance. One approach to suppressing the migration of the matrix OIPC ions is tethering the cations and anions to produce zwitterions. Zwitterions are a class of materials that contain covalently bonded positive and negative charges. They are non-volatile and can exhibit thermal and electrochemical stabilities comparable with ILs and OIPCs. They have previously been used as additives to enhance the degree of lithium ion dissociation within ILs and other electrolyte systems. However, their applications as a sole matrix electrolyte in electrochemical devices have yet to be explored.

This talk will summarize our recent work investigating the physical, thermal and morphological properties of a pyrrolidinium-based trifluoroborate zwitterion, its mixture with different concentrations of lithium salt, and the electrochemical performance of these novel electrolytes in lithium metal batteries.

Dmitrii Rakov

Dmitrii has graduated from Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg, Russia) majoring in analytical chemistry. He worked on the design and attestation of potentiometrical sensors for inorganic analysis. Later on, he moved to China to gain experience in the electrocatalytical water splitting based on metal-doped nickel chalcogenides at Harbin Institute of Technology.

In July 2018, Dmitrii has started his PhD program at Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia) under the supervision of Professor Maria Forsyth, as part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electrochemical Science research project. His project is dedicated to computational and experimental investigation of electrode/ionic liquids electrolyte interfaces, their structures, and the link to their electrochemical behavior for alkali metal storage. The detailed example of his project can be found in the following publication [Nature materials 19.10 (2020): 1096-1101]. Nowadays, Dmitrii is working with NASA Ames Research Centre (CA, USA) as an intern at the Universities Space Research Association for the computational investigation of electrode/ionic liquids electrolyte interfaces.

Molecular level electrode/electrolyte interface engineering with high-salt contained ionic liquids for the optimization of metal anode battery performance

Dmitrii Rakov

Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia.


Metal anode batteries are promising candidates for high-energy density storage; however, they suffer from dendritic growth causing cell failure. Recently, the ILs with high salt content (IL:salt, 1:1) demonstrated a great improvement in the stabilization of metal anode cycling compared to the system with low salt content, which is accompaniedby the formation of a favorable solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) and uniform deposition morphology. However, the mechanism behind this phenomenon is not fully understood nor optimized.

Here, we use atomic-force microscopy (AFM) and molecular dynamic (MD) simulation to investigate the effect of salt concentration and applied electrode potential on the electrode/ILs interface. The AFM results shows that IL with the highest salt content possesses the weakest ion-ion and ion-surface interfacial interactions regardless of the charge of the electrode. The MD shows a larger concentration of molten-salt like metal-anion aggregates near the electrode for high salt-content IL compared to that of low salt-based electrolyte, and more negative polarization further increases their presence and modifies their coordination. This structure is promising for anode cycling due to more even interfacial distribution of metal cation, high nucleation rate, and abundance of F-source for a stable SEI. These findings were confirmed by Na||Na cell cycling in IL with 50 mol% Na salt.

Arushi Manchanda

She is a research fellow at the University of Tasmania and is working within the Electrofluidics and Diagnostics Theme of the ACES. She did her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Connecticut, USA. Her research work here is based on the use of threads and other novel substrates to develop point-of-care analytical devices. Her research interests lie in the interdisciplinary fields of pharmaceutical sciences, analytical chemistry, thermodynamics, statistical analysis, and material chemistry.

Direct analysis of swabbed samples using thread-based analytical systems

Arushi Manchanda, Vipul Gupta, Brett Paull

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, Hobart 7001, Tasmania, Australia


Swab-based sample collection is one of the most widely used methods for biochemical, pharmaceutical, forensic, environmental, and other analytical procedures because of their ease of use and their ability to collect both wet and dry samples from a variety of surfaces. However, the analysis of the swabbed sample usually requires its desorption from the swab into a solvent, which is later injected into an analytical system. This dilutes the collected sample by many folds (hampering its qualitative and quantitative analysis) and renders the process unsuitable for point-of-care analysis. Hence, here, we are developing a method to allow direct transfer of analytes from the swab onto a thread-based analytical platform. Thread-based platforms have been recently used for a variety of analytical procedures because of their low-cost, biocompatibility, and chemically resistant nature. The developed method has demonstrated more than 90% transfer of a range of analytes ranging from small to large molecules from a variety of swabs, such as polyurethane and cotton and onto different types of threads, such as nylon, mercerized cotton, cotton, and polyester. An instantaneous transfer was observed for all the studied analytes, and they were further focused (in a concentrated band) using isotachophoresis within 2-3 minutes.

Liang Chen PhD student from Utas working in Electrofluedics and Diagnostics theme, under the guidance of Prof. Brett Paull

Thread-based isotachophoresis clean-up and trapping of alkaloids using nanoparticle modified thread followed by DESI-MS analysis

Liang Chen, Alireza Ghiasvand, and Brett Paull

Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS), School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart 7001, Australia

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Sciences (ACES), School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia


Desorption electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) has attracted considerable attention due to its in-situ, rapid, and real-time analysis without the need for additional sample pretreatment. However, DESI-MS analysis of complex matrices is not possible without sample clean-up and pretreatment. On the other hand, threads have been used for the fabrication of low-cost, disposable, and eco-friendly electrophoretic and microfluidic devices recently, due to the unique features. In this research, a thread-based isotachophoresis (TB-ITP) technique for clean-up of alkaloids (coptisine, berberine and palmatine) in biological samples was developed and coupled with DESI-MS system for the quantification. A single-string nylon thread was used as the TB-ITP substrate and terminating and leading electrolytes were 20 mM β-alaine and 20 mM potassium acetate, respectively. For trapping of the analytes, another nylon string was modified by chemical bonding of graphene oxide (GO) using bovine serum albumin as the linker. A knot of the GO-modified thread was put on the TB-ITP thread (1 cm from the leading electrode and 4 cm from the terminating electrode). The results demonstrated that the GO-modified knot exhaustively trapped the analytes. It was substantiated that TB-ITP/DESI-MS is a proper technique for complicated sample analysis.

Liang Wu

My PhD focused on the development of 3D printed Electroosmotic Pumps. A negative space FDM-3D printing technique was developed to fabricate capillary structures which were demonstrated to be capable of functioning as a simple electroosmotic pump (EOP) for bio microfluidic applications.

A nylon fibre-based isotachophoresis microfluidic approach for isolation and concentration of nucleic acids

Liang Wu, Vipul Gupta, Peter C. Innis, Brett Paull

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS), School of Natural Sciences I College of Science and Engineering, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia 2522.

Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

A novel low-cost, disposable nylon fibre-based microfluidic device has been developed for the purification and preconcentration of nucleic acids from biological samples. This device, based on an on-fibre isotachophoresis (ITP) focusing method, was assembled by commercially available tightened nylon fibres across a novel and reusable 3D printed electrophoresis platform. The device and electrophoretic approach applied provided for a significant solute focusing band over a 6 cm length fibre within 5 minutes, by focussing fluorescently-labelled solutes from the sample reservoir isotachophoretically. This technique has great potential in the development of multiplexing platforms, allowing to simultaneously process different samples in parallel.

Hao Zhou

Hao Zhou received the B.S. degree in building environment and facility engineering from Tongji University, Shanghai, China, in 2004, the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, in 2008, the second M.S. degree in engineering practice (mechanical) from the University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, in 2009, the Ph.D. degree from the School of Mechanical, Materials, Mechatronic and Biomedical Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia, in 2014.

He is currently a Research Fellow with ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong, mainly focusing on soft robotics for prosthetic devices. His research interests include mechanical design of prosthetic hands, soft actuators, soft sensors, human machine interface based on bio-signals (e.g., electromyogram), simulations and analysis of electromagnetics, simulations and analysis of the biomechanics of small intestine, mechanics of viscoelastic materials, and active locomotion of wireless capsule endoscopy.

A 3D-printed soft robotic prosthetic hand with embedded soft sensors to improve pattern recognition based myoelectric control

Hao Zhou

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science


Pattern recognition (PR) based myoelectric control has been widely studied to provide robotic prosthetic hands with more intuitive hand movements recently. Wireless surface electromyography (EMG) sensors are employed together with machine learning algorithms to analyze the muscle activity from a user’s residual arm and predict the user’s intention of hand movements. However, due to the lack of sensing capabilities, current prosthetic hands cannot have the PR based myoelectric control integrated within their motion systems perfectly. Another problem of conventional prosthetic hands is that they require assembly of rigid parts (e.g., links and joints) and they usually lack mechanical compliance. By combing the techniques of soft robotics and additive manufacturing (3D printing), we have developed a novel and cost-effective soft robotic prosthetic hand, which has a monolithic structure with embedded position and touch sensors, requiring minimal assembly. With programed intrinsic compliance of the soft body, this prosthetic hand has better performance in terms of adapting to unknown surfaces when grasping objects. With the seamlessly embedded sensors, our soft robotic hand is capable of real-time finger position tracking and it can work more efficiently with the PR based myoelectric control, providing more intuitive hand movements to the prosthesis users.

Gerardo Alan Montoya Gurrola Mexican mechatronics engineer from the Laguna Institute of Technology. With more than 6 years of experience working in the manufacturing industry, worked as full-time teacher at 2 of the main technological universities in southern Mexico. With his team, was awarded as National (Mexico) and World champion in 2013 of the Vex Robotics Competition which made him enter the STEM hall of fame of the REC Foundation.

He has participated in altruistic projects as co-founder of RE: Purpose for good, an association responsible for making technological assistance accessible to people with disabilities, using recyclable materials for the fabrication of prostheses and wheelchairs.

Currently a PhD student, under the tutelage of Professor, Gursel Alici at Wollongong University in the Soft Robotics area and an active member of the Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science ACES

Adaptive Neural Interface to Control Prosthetic Devices: Design, Fabrication and Performance Evaluation (Update)

Gerardo Montoya

PhD Student in Soft Robotics Chapter


Neural Interface is a direct communication method between a nerve system and an external piece of hardware, this hardware can be prosthesis, a transportation device or even a property [1]. Nowadays, there are interfaces that depend on certain physical capacities, which are not available to all persons with disabilities, having a direct impact on their independence and their adaptation to the environment in which they live.

The development of this type of interface can help not only the manipulation of a prosthesis, but once developed the system can be extended and adapted to other technologies, such as Domotics, manufacturing and telemetry, in addition to helping us to understand a little more how the nervous system works in certain states and environments.

This research proposes a new approach in the obtaining and recording of data through the Nervous System, more specifically the median and ulnar nerves. The proposed device seeks to solve the problems that have been presented during the last decades with respect to obtaining data of this nature.

The research also aims to develop a technology that is usable in the day a day of patients, as well as facilitating the manipulation of upper limb prosthesis, helping haptic communication [2] with the environment that surrounds them.

References:

[1] C. T. Z. O. M. B. E. G. C. R. Brice, «Controlling a Wheelchair in a building using thought,» IEEE Intell Syst, pp. 1-8, 2007.

[2] G. R. d. l. Torre, «The importance of the Sense of Touch in virtual and Real Environments,» IEEE Multimed, vol. 13, pp. 24-30, 2006.

Hong Quan Le

Bachelor of Engineering in Mechatronic Engineering from Hochiminh City University of Technology and Education (HCMUTE – Vietnam).

Research interest: statistical signal processing, machine learning, human machine interface, embedded systems

Improving usability, intuitiveness of controlling prosthetic hand via non-invasive approach

Hong Quan LE

Soft robotics – University of Wollongong


The human hand possesses a sophisticated structure. With more than 25 degrees of freedom, 18 tendons cross the wrist, 19 articulations and opposable thumbs it capable of carry out extremely fine and complex movement. Possessing that high level of dexterity, the human hand is a useful enable us to interact with environment for communicating with each other with ease. Losing the hand lead to detrimental consequence. Post-operation, artificial limbs are chosen by patient with the hope restoring function and look of their lost segment. Nevertheless, most prosthetic hand on the market fails to satisfy customer needs due to their lack of control intuitiveness. Rejection rate among prosthetic users is as high as 40%. My research project aims to improve robustness and intuitiveness of functional prosthetic hand via non-invasive method. Current non-invasive prosthetic control is affected by various factors: high input lag between intention and actuation, performance degradation across sessions and different limbs position. To overcome these drawbacks, a multi-modal sensory framework is proposed. Together with EMG, inertia measure will be used as a complementary signal to capture both sensor orientation and surface vibration. The framework includes three stages: muscle activity detection, pattern recognition and proportional mapping.

Irina Simonova

Irina A. Simonova earned her BSci (2003) degree in Chemistry and Ecology at the Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), MSci (2005) and PhD (2009) degrees in Chemistry at the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), and worked there until 2013. Initially her research focused on selective water sorbents for low heat transformation and storage, since 2009 she had directed her attention to an investigation of carbon nanotubes properties. In 2013, she joined Monash University as a teaching associate in School of Chemistry. In 2018, she joined Prof. Macfarlane group at Monash University. Her major research interest now is in the design and investigation of catalytic electrochemical systems for ammonia synthesis from N2 and H2.

Li-mediated Ammonia Electrosynthesis in a Two-electrode System at Ambient Temperature: a Cell Design

Irina Simonova

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Monash University, Clayton,

Victoria 3800, Australia

School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia


Nowadays, ammonia is not only the most important source of fertilizers but is also becoming a promising fuel, i.e. a chemical storage of energy, in particular derived from renewable sources. Using the renewable-energy resources instead of the fossil fuels for the ammonia synthesis will significantly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and will increase the accessibility of NH3 worldwide. The traditional Haber–Bosch process for the production of ammonia is a high temperature and pressure process using H2 derived from fossil fuels. A sustainable alternative approach is a Li-mediated electrochemical reduction of N2 to NH3 at ambient temperature and relatively low pressure coupled to electrocatalytic oxidation of H2 sourced from sustainable water electrolysis technology. This concept is now actively investigated by an increasing number of scientists around the world, although majorly focusing on the cathode process only studied in an analytical three-electrode mode. Based on our advances in both Li-mediated N2 reduction at the cathode and H2 oxidation at the anode under relevant conditions, we are now aiming to develop a two-electrode cell for the ammonia synthesis. The presentation will highlight our most recent developments in the cell design, which currently enables ammonia electrosynthesis at a rate above 5 nmol×s-1 cm-2×with a faradaic efficiency of at least 25%.

Linbo Li

Linbo Li received his M.Eng. (2016) at Capital Normal University. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Monash University. His research interests focus on (1) development of electrochemical sensors and fluorescent chemosensors based on carbon nanomaterial, (2) advancement of functionality of nanomaterials through atomic modification and molecular conjugation, and (3) study of the green chemistry for energy conversion and storage.

Decoupled Hydrophobic Framework for Long-Acting Conversion of CO2 to ethylene

Linbo Li, Chuangwei Liu, Venkata Sai Sriram Mosali, Zhenzhen Lu, Rico.Tabor, Alan M. Bond, Qinfen Gu*, Jie Zhang*

School of Chemistry, Monash University

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Monash University


The deployment of gas diffusion layers (GDLs) for the electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) has enabled current densities an order of magnitude greater than those of aqueous H cells. The gains in production, however, have come with stability challenges due to rapid flooding of GDEs, which frustrate both laboratory experiments and scale-up prospects. Here, we developed a general and twofold hydrophobic strategy including skeleton-hydrophobic and condensed surface-hydrophobic network methods by rational treatments with PTFE dipping, solvent dipping, blowing and sintering. The modified GDLs not only keep hydrophobic also maintain a moderate porosity and conductivity. Using operando/in situ spectroscopic and computational studies, we investigated the comprehensive performances of a nickel single-atom-N-doped carbon catalysts/Cu nanoparticles heterostructures based on the modified GDLs. We find that the modest pore size distribution of modified GDL can regulate the local CO concentration and further strengthen the stabilization of atop-bound CO intermediate. As a result, the working electrode obtained an improved ethylene Faradaic efficiency of 71% and significantly improved stability with three orders of magnitude compared with the commercial counterpart.

Ghulam Murtaza Panhwar

Biography: PhD student at Deakin University Burwood, Melbourne

with masters in materials for energy storage and conversion from

Erasmus mundus (MESC+) and bachelor’s in chemical engineering

from Pakistan, Mehran UET.

Development of New Redox Electrolytes for Thermal Energy Harvesting Device


Deakin University

[email protected]

Thermal energy harvesting is the process of utilizing freely available heat generated from various sources such as industry, automobile, household appliances and from the human body released in the environment. Converting that heat efficiently into electricity is a big challenge to the scientific community and one of the promising technologies which can be used for harvesting waste heat energy is the thermogalvanic cell or thermocell.

Thermocell is a device consisting of an electrolyte, two electrodes and a redox couple that converts heat energy directly into electricity. Thermocell work is based on principal of the Seebeck effect, which is the potential difference between two electrodes at two different temperatures. Thermocell comprising of aqueous electrolyte containing ferri/ferrocyanide redox couple is one of the most highly studied due to their high Seebeck coefficient, good solubility of redox couples and high current exchange rate on metal electrodes. However, despite all these desirable properties, aqueous electrolyte containing ferri/ferrocyanide suffers from issues like toxicity, leakage, and evaporation, which limits their application in energy devices, especially thermocell.

In this project, new metal centered redox couples are been investigated for thermocell applications. In particular, copper complexes containing bipyridine, phenanthroline and their derivative ligands and different anions are tested for their Seebeck coefficient, thermal stability and electrochemical reversibility. Introduction of copper centered redox couple and organic ionic plastic crystal as solid-state electrolyte for thermocell application is also being studied.

Saimon M. Silva

As an early career post-doctoral scientist and expert in bioengineering I am establishing my career in the development and translation of innovative biosensors for cancer diagnostics. The critical understandings gained from my early research have assisted me to make significant contributions to the development of materials and engineering solutions in diverse biological applications, with an emphasis on biosensing. Recently, I have developed strong interest in applying these biosensors to the evolving paradigm of liquid biopsy involving minimally-invasive detection and monitoring of analytes in bodily fluids of cancer patients.

Does Reduction of Liquid Crystal Graphene Improve its Electrochemical Properties?

Saimon Moraes Silva; Alexandre Xavier Mendes; Simon E. Moulton

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria 3122, Australia.

The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery, St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3065, Australia.

[email protected]

Liquid Crystal Graphene oxide (LCGO) is a very interesting material and widely used in tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, and cells stimulation/recording.1 LCGO is attractive for electrochemical applications due to its great electron mobility and high surface:volume ratio. Due to its two-dimensional structure and presence of oxygen-containing functional groups, LCGO is versatile in its capability to be functionalized, loaded with bioactive molecules or to interact directly with the polymers as for example hydrogels.2 Previous reports from our research group have revealed high biocompatibility of LCGO, which enhanced proliferation and differentiation of cells.3 One question that is frequently raised around our work is if the reduction of LCGO to produce reduced LCGO (r-LCGO) would improve its electrical conductivity and consequently its performance during the application for neural cell stimulation. Thus, in this presentation I will discuss the reduction of LCGO using a mild procedure and the changes in electrical conductivity. The pros and cons of this reducing process will be discussed having in mind our target application for cell stimulation.

1. Shin, S. R.; Li, Y.-C.; Jang, H. L.; Khoshakhlagh, P.; Akbari, M.; Nasajpour, A.; Zhang, Y. S.; Tamayol, A.; Khademhosseini, A., Graphene-based materials for tissue engineering. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 2016, 105, 255-274.

2. Chen, D.; Feng, H.; Li, J., Graphene Oxide: Preparation, Functionalization, and Electrochemical Applications. Chemical Reviews 2012, 112 (11), 6027-6053.

3. Duc, D.; Stoddart, P. R.; McArthur, S. L.; Kapsa, R. M. I.; Quigley, A. F.; Boyd-Moss, M.; Moulton, S. E., Fabrication of a Biocompatible Liquid Crystal Graphene Oxide–Gold Nanorods Electro- and Photoactive Interface for Cell Stimulation. Advanced Healthcare Materials 2019, 8 (9), 1801321.

Zhi Chen

Zhi Chen is an associate research fellow of ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) at the University of Wollongong where he has been a faculty member and completed his PhD since 2015. His research interests lie in the area of biomedical engineering, ranging from theory to design to implementation. He has collaborated actively with clinicians in several other disciplines of medical and biological science, particularly corneal, skin and neural bioengineering for clinical application.

Building biomimetic human cornea using electro-compacted collagen

Zhi Chen, Xiao Liu, Jeremy Crook, Jingjing You, Yihui Song, Gerard Sutton, Gordon Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Squires Way, Fairy Meadow, New South Wales 2519, Australia


Corneal transplantation remains the main treatment for severe cornea damage. However, the shortage of suitable corneal tissue donors, transplant rejection and the increasing risk of transmissible diseases underpin the urgent need for qualified substitutes for corneal tissue replacement. Engineering substantia propria (or stroma of cornea) that mimics the function and anatomy of natural tissue is vital for in vitro modelling and in vivo regeneration. There are, however, few examples of bioengineered biomimetic corneal stroma. Here, we describe the construction of a 3D corneal stroma model (CSM) using electro-compacted collagen (EC) films to include orthogonally arranged collagen fibrils and primary human corneal stromal cells (hCSCs), which is analogous to the anatomical structure of native human cornea. Our work represents a significant advance for synthetic corneal engineering, with the potential to be used for full-thickness and functional cornea replacement as well as informing in vivo tissue regeneration.

Chunyan Qin

Chunyan Qin is currently a PhD candidate in Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI)/ ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), University of Wollongong. Currently, she focused on the project of “Bipolar electrostimulation-potential wireless cell stimulation”.

Bipolar Electroactive Conducting Polymers for Wireless Cell Stimulation

Chunyan Qin, Zhilian Yue, Yunfeng Chao, Robert J. Forster, Fionn Ó Maolmhuaidh, Xu-Feng Huang, Stephen Beirne, Gordon G. Wallace and Jun Chen

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Squires Way, North

Wollongong, NSW 2519, Australia.


Conventional organic conducting polymers (CPs)-based electrical stimulation (ES) systems have been extensively explored in modulation of cell and tissue functions for biomedical applications. Bipolar electrochemistry could offer an effective pathway to modify these ES systems into a more desirable contactless mode. In this study, we present for the first time the development of a CP-based bipolar electrostimulation (BPES) system for living cells. Polypyrrole (PPy) films with different dopants have been utilised to demonstrate reversible and recoverable bipolar electrochemical activity under a low driving DC voltage (<5.5 V). A BPES prototype enabling wireless and programmable cell stimulation has been devised using PPy co-doped with dextran sulfate (DS) and collagen (PPy-DS/collagen) as a bipolar electrode and rat pheochromocytoma cells as a model cell line. Significantly, wireless stimulation enhances cell proliferation and differentiation. The work establishes a new paradigm for the electrostimulation of living cells using CPs as the bipolar electrodes, which provides an attractive wireless approach to advance the field of medical bionics.

Mary Jean Walker Mary is a lecturer in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University.

Mary’s bioethics research focuses on ethical issues related to the development and use of new medical technologies. She also has research interesting in philosophy of medicine and personal identity.

Induced pluripotent stem cell-based systems for personalising epilepsy treatment: Research ethics challenges and new insights for personalised medicine ethics

Mary Jean Walker, Jane Nielsen, Eliza Goddard, Alex Harris, and Katrina Hutchison

La Trobe University


This paper examines potential ethical and legal issues arising during the research, development and clinical

use of a proposed strategy in personalised medicine (PM): using human induced pluripotent stem cell

(iPSC)-derived tissue cultures as predictive models of individual patients to inform treatment decision-

making. We focus on epilepsy treatment as a likely early application of this strategy, for which early-stage

stage research is underway. In relation to the research process, we examine risks and burdens associated

with biological samples, data, and health; research with vulnerable populations; possible use of neural

organoids; and what level of accuracy justifies using the iPSC system. In relation to clinical use, we examine

potential uses in pre-natal screening, and effects on clinical decision-making and clinician-patient

communication. Although our focus is providing recommendations for researchers developing work in this

area, we identify an issue thus far neglected in the ethics of PM: PM tends to represent treatment decisions

as though they are, or should be, directed solely by biomedical information, but this in itself could be

detrimental to best personalising treatment decisions in the clinic.

Linda Wollersheim

PhD Candidate undertaking a comparative study that explores key policy and regulatory settings impacting on community access, operation and ownership of renewable energy (RE) technologies in Australia and Germany.

My work examines the discursive framing of RE policies and regulatory reforms, focusing on the practical implications for renewable energy communities, the underlying assumptions about transition pathways and the prevailing power structures dominating RE policy, regulatory reforms and energy markets. My research explores concepts and practices of energy justice and energy democracy with an empirical focus on the role of communities in enacting low carbon transitions.

Marginalised by Big Grid Energy? The impact of policy barriers on mid-scale renewables projects

Linda Wollersheim

Deakin University


Renewable energy (RE) is key to climate change transitions for carbon abatement needed for Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. As the International RE Agency argues, timely transitions need to embrace small-/medium-/large-scale renewable projects to optimise global emissions reductions. But whether policy settings favour Big-Grid Energy or facilitate both large-scale investor and small-to mid-scale (community-led) renewables projects may impact the speed, diversity and depth of RE transitions. It is argued that mid-scale projects developed and owned by renewable energy communities (RECs) are key to supporting distributed regional energy systems, garnering community support and developing localised grids. Yet whether current energy policies facilitate RECs development is open to question. The paper analyses national policy frameworks impacting on RECs development in Australia and interrogates what this might mean for timely, effective, penetrative change away from fossil fuels. By means of qualitative discourse analysis, the research focuses on (1) story lines narrating the logic of dominant discourses in selected national energy policies and the prevailing power structures dominating RE policy, regulatory reforms and the structure of Australian energy markets; (2) policy impact analysis of the barriers for RECs; highlighting the impact on mid-scale generator Hepburn Wind Community Energy (Australia’s first community-owned windfarm).

Poster Presenters Biographies & Abstracts

Poster Presenter Summary

1. Adriana Nascimento, Swinburne University of Technology Soft Electro- and Photo-Active Hydrogels for Neural Cell Stimulation

2. Aida Naseri, Univeristy of Wollongong Development of highly conductive 3D printable ink for nerve tissue regeneration

3. Alexandre Xavier Mendes, Swinburne University of Technology Characterisation of Printability and Electroactivity of Photocrosslinkable Gelatin-Graphene Oxide Hybrid Hydrogel

4. Andres Ruland, University of Wollongong A Standardized quantitative ultrasound imaging (SQUI) approach for the non-invasive 3D imaging of bioscaffolds and cell spheroids

5. Carly Baker, University of Wollongong Cholesterol-Functionalised Conducting Polymers for Applications as Bioelectronic Probes

6. Chong-Yong Lee, University of Wollongong A Robust 3D Printed Multilayer Conductive Graphene/Polycaprolactone Composite Electrode

7. Chunyan Qin, University of Wollongong Bipolar Electroactive Conducting Polymers for Wireless Cell Stimulation

8. Cuong Nguyen, Monash University N2 Photoelectrochemical Fixation on Axis-Oriented, Single Crystalline Anatase TiO2 Films with Reactive {100} Facets

9. Danielle Warren, University of Wollongong Modelling Schizophrenia with iPSCs, 3D Bioprinting Techniques and Electrical Stimulation

10. Emma James, University of Wollongong Direct Piezoelectricity for Neural and Cardiac Tissue Bioengineering

11. Ghulam Murtaza Panhwar Development of New Redox Electrolytes for Thermal Energy Harvesting Device

12. Grishmi Rajbhandari Printed Antenna Coils for Cochlear Implants

13. Holly Hunt, University of Wollongong Ulvan Hydrogels for Wound Healing

14. Inseong Cho, University of Wollongong Substrate-dependent Electron Transfer using Selective Intermolecular Interactions between Mixed-Ligand Cobalt Complexes and Surface-Bound Organic Molecules

15. Jawairia Khan, University of Wollongong Textile-Electrofluidics with Wireless Bipolar Electrochemistry: Towards Low Cost and Sensitive Micro-Total-Analysis Systems

16. Jeremy Dinoro, University of Wollongong Novel Selective Laser Sintering Approaches for Bone Tissue Engineering

17. Jinshuo Zou, University of Wollongong Alkalinity Promoting Formate Production from CO2 over a Wide Electrochemical Potential Window on a SnS Catalyst

18. Johnson Chung, University of Wollongong Bioprint Scaffolds for Microtia 19. Kyuman Kim, University of Wollongong A methodology to understand photo-electrochemical behavior in unstable Cu2O photocathode system 20. Laura Garcia-Quintana, Deakin University Highly Homogenous Sodium Superoxide Growth in Na-O2 Batteries Enabled by a Hybrid Electrolyte

21. Liang Chen, University of Tasmania Thread-Based Isotachophoresis Clean-Up and Trapping of Alkaloids using Nanoparticle Modified Thread followed by DESI-MS Analysis

22. Liang Wu, University of Wollongong A Nylon Fibre-Based Isotachophoresis Microfluidic Approach for Isolation and Concentration of Nucleic Acids

23. Liangxu Lin, University of Wollongong Unzipping Chemical Bonds of Non-Layered Bulk Structures to form Ultrathin 2D Nanomaterials

24. Malachy Maher, University of Wollongong Comparison of Collagen Hydrogels for Bioprinting and Orthopaedic Tissue Engineering

25. Matteo Solazzo, Trinity College Dublin Structural Crystallisation of Crosslinked 3D PEDOT:PSS Anisotropic Porous Biomaterials to Generate Highly Conductive Platforms for Tissue Engineering Applications

26. Md Habibullah Dalal, University of Wollongong Electrochemical Cathodic Exfoliation of Graphite to Graphene in Aqueous Inorganic Salt Solutions

27. Mitchell St Clair-Glover, University of Wollongong Development of an Innervated Full Thickness Human Skin Model by 3D Printing

28. Nuwan Dhanushka Hegoda Arachchi Fibrinogen and Bovine Serum Albumin Adsorption and Conformational Dynamics on Silica Nanoparticle Based Model Substrates

29. Sarah Higginbottom, University of Wollongong Three-Dimensional Human Brain Organoid Models for Glioblastoma

30. Shuai Zhang, University of Wollongong 3D Printed All Polymers Wearable Thermo-Electrochemical Cells Harvesting Body Heat

31. Stephen Beirne, University of Wollongong Clinically Driven Biofabrication Training Systems Development

32. Steven Posniak, University of Wollongong Co-Cultures in 3D Printed Scaffolds for Cartilage Regeneration for Craniofacial Reconstruction

33. Sujani Abeywardena, University of Wollongong Cell Culture on 3D Textile Based Electrofluidic Platform

34. Sulokshana Marks, University of Wollongong Understanding and Optimisation of Chitosan Based Hydrogels for 3D Printing

35. Thomas Blesch, Monash University Symmetric, Non-Aqueous Redox Flow Battery based on Iron Complexes

36. Yuetong Zhou, University of Wollongong The Significance of Supporting Electrolyte on Poly (vinyl alcohol) – Iron (II)/Iron(III) Solid-State Electrolytes for Wearable Thermo-Electrochemical Cells

Adriana Nascimento

PhD Candidate in Biomedical Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology. I hold a Bachelor Degree in Chemical Engineering obtained from Newton Paiva University (Belo Horizonte/Brazil). QA/QC expertise in production lines of manufacturing processes of tyres, soft drinks and steel. Experience in Smart Cities leading the IoT (Internet of Things) node and TEDx head of logistics. I was awarded with an undergraduate student scholarship through the Brazilian government program, Science Without Borders, to study Biotechnology Forensics and learn DNA techniques at Fleming College in Canada. I also have research experience in electronical waste recycling for the construction of popular houses.

Soft Electro- and Photo-Active Hydrogels for Neural Cell Stimulation

Adriana Teixeira do Nascimento; Saimon M. Silva; Paul R. Stoddart; Simon E. Moulton

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery, St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

[email protected]

Degenerative diseases compromise the nervous system and affect bodily functions necessary for everyday living as the population ages 1. In neuroscience field, neuronal cell stimulation is a technique widely used to investigate and understand these diseases through studies of neuronal function and behavior 2. Electrical stimulation can activate many intracellular signaling pathways and influence intracellular microenvironment, even it is a technology that functions well in modulating neuronal behavior it presents some downsides such as tissue damage due to high stimulation current and the difficulty of stimulating cells individually 3. A potential approach to overcome those disadvantages is to develop a co-stimulation strategy by combining electrical and optical stimulation. Based on this, this project aims to develop an electro-optical stimulation protocol by using a composite material aiming to achieve a soft interface that can be suitable to neuronal cell culture. The material will be composed by Liquid Crystal Graphene Oxide (LCGO), Gold Nanorods (AuNRs) and Gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA). Furthermore, this project intends to investigate the intrinsic relation between physicochemical properties of soft electro-optically active hydrogels exposed to optical-electrical costimulation parameters and its impact on neural cellular behavior. In the bigger picture, studies conducted in this field will provide knowledge on biomaterials for soft interfaces to go one step further in terms of awareness of neuronal regeneration. Furthermore, potentially rising hope towards new treatments and care for people facing aggressive diseases.

1. Toricelli M, Pereira AAR, Abrao GS, Malerba HN, Maia J, Buck HS, et al. Mechanisms of neuroplasticity and brain degeneration: strategies for protection during the aging process. Neural Regen Res. 2021;16(1):58-67. 2. Rahman MM, Ferdous KS, Ahmed M. Emerging Promise of Nanoparticle-Based Treatment for Parkinson's disease. Biointerface Res Appl Chem. 2020;10(6):7135-51. 3. Histed MH, Bonin V, Reid RC. Direct activation of sparse, distributed populations of cortical neurons by electrical microstimulation. Neuron. 2009;63(4):508-22.

Aida Naseri

Aida Naseri has received her MSc in polymer engineering in 2013 from Tehran Polytechnic (AUT), Iran. She is currently a 3rd year PhD scholar at university of Wollongong under the supervision of Prof. Gordon Wallace. Her research interests include 3D printing, conductive materials, and tissue engineering. Her current research is focused on development of novel aqueous based 3D printable conductive inks for nerve tissue regeneration.

Development of highly conductive 3D printable ink for nerve tissue regeneration

Aida Naseri, Cormac Fay, Andrew Nattestad, Sepidar Sayyar, Zhilian Yue, Xiao Liu, Gordon Wallace

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electro materials Science, University of Wollongong, New South Wales 2522


In tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, scaffolds act as a temporary extracellular matrix to support cell growth, survival, and function. Electrostimulation has shown promise in promoting desirable cellular responses in excitable tissues such as nerve, skeletal muscle and bone tissues. 3D printing has received a great deal of attention due to its capability to create complex structures in a spatially controlled manner. Therefore, developing cyto-compatible conductive inks that can be printable is crucial for engineering of excitable cells and tissues.

Recently, our group has developed a new generation of graphene, namely edge functionalized expanded graphite (EFXG) with great water dispersibility (up to 30mg/ml) and low resistivity (5-10 ohm.cm). In this work, a 3D printable aqueous based conductive ink based on EFXG as the conductive component and chitosan, a polysaccharide with excellent biocompatibility, as a binder was formulated for 3D extrusion printing.

A novel printing setup was developed to 3D print solid structures from these aqueous based inks with high precision and repeatability. With a layer resolution of 200 µm, structures several mm tall were produced and these multi-layered structures were characterized in terms of their mechanical properties, conductivity and cytocompatibility using PC12 cells.

Alexandre Xavier Mendes

PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology. Double bachelor’s degree in Science and Technology and in Chemical Engineering obtained from Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri, Brazil. Experience studies in Biotechnology Forensics and DNA techniques at Fleming College, Canada. Work experience in the pharmaceutical field on development and investigation of new drugs and optimization of process to minimize cost and maximize efficiency. Research experience in development of electrocatalysts semiconductor fluid diffusers based on cobalt and nickel for application in filter-press reactors for degradation of emerging pollutants (drugs) in water.

Characterization of printability and electroactivity of photocrosslinkable gelatin-graphene oxide hybrid hydrogel

Alexandre Xavier Mendes; Saimon Moraes Silva; Cathal D. O’Connell; Serena Duchi; Anita F. Quigley; Robert M.I. Kapsa; Simon E. Moulton

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria 3122, Australia.

The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery, St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3065, Australia.

[email protected]

The human tissues most sensitive to electrical activity such as neural and muscle tissues are relatively soft and yet, traditional conductive materials used to interface with them are typically stiffer by many orders of magnitude. Overcoming this mismatch, by creating materials which are both very soft and electroactive, is a major challenge in bioelectronics and biomaterials science. Soft electroactive hydrogels (EAH) are a promising class of biomaterials for applications where electrical conductivity is required in two- or three-dimensional architectures. Here we describe the development and characterization of improved photo-crosslinkable EAH based on gelatin methacryloyol (GelMA) and large area Graphene Oxide (GO) flakes. Addition of small amounts of GO to GelMA hydrogel resulted in a dramatic decrease in the impedance. Despite this dramatic change in electroactivity, the mechanical properties of the GelMA/GO composite hydrogels were only moderately affected. GO addition also enhanced the rheological properties of GelMA composites, thus facilitating 3D extrusion printing. GelMA/GO enhanced filament formation, improved printability as well as the shape fidelity/integrity of 3D printed structures. Additionally, GelMA/GO 3D printed structures presented a higher electroactive behaviour when compared with non-printed samples containing the same GelMA/GO amount, which can be attributed to the higher electroactive surface area of 3D printed structures.

Andres Ruland Andres is working on the development of non-destructive techniques for the characterization of biomaterials and electromaterials produced at ACES. Over the last 3 years, Andres has focused on the use of diverse ultrasound methodologies for the non-invasive evaluation and imaging of biomaterials and cellular constructs. He has become proficient on the use of MATLAB for the preparation of automated scripts, interfacing computers with instrumentation, 2D/3D image reconstruction and analysis. His research interest is to explore the characterization of different biological systems using ultrasound. He also is interested on implementing other-nondestructive characterization techniques for complementing the research activities carried out at ACES.

A standardized quantitative ultrasound imaging (SQUI) approach for the non-invasive 3D imaging of bioscaffolds and cell spheroids

Andres Ruland, Carmine Onofrillo Serena Duchi, Johnson Chung, and Gordon Wallace

aARC Centre of Excellence for Electro materials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.


The use of tissue engineering (TE) approaches are recognized as a viable solution for the repair of auricular and articular cartilage. Such approaches must be first well understood before their translation into clinical therapies. TE approaches therefore involve the use of bioscaffolds as templates for hosting the differentiation and maturation of stem cells to produce cartilage. The use of cell spheroids followed by their chondrogenic differentiation is another relevant aspect of TE, which serves as a screening for validating the source of various stem cells in their ability to form cartilage. However, to date there are no suitable non-invasive imaging techniques that allow the 3D quantitative imaging of bioscaffold and cell spheroids in their full dimension. In this poster, we present a standardized quantitative ultrasound imaging (SQUI) approach for the non-invasive 3D imaging of bioscaffolds and cell spheroids. The use of SQUI allows for the standardization of TE constructs relative to an acellular phantom which includes a sound speed mismatch compensation function. This approach aims to provide a robust, objective and versatile imaging tool for the evaluation of TE constructs of evolving sound speed occurring in bioscaffolds producing neocartilage.

Carly Baker

Carly completed a BSc (Hons) at University of Sydney (2014-2019). During her penultimate year (2016), she was offered a job with the Department of Health as a regulatory scientist (2016-2018). She completed Honours in June 2019 in Polymer science, synthesizing molecular polymer brushes for applications in cartilage engineering. Succeeding Honours, she commenced work at the University of Wollongong (2019), Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) as a Research assistant in microfluidics under Prof. David Officer and in March 2020 began a PhD project aimed at synthesizing conducting polymers for applications in bioelectronics.

Cholesterol-functionalised conducting polymers for applications as bioelectronic probes

Carly Baker, Klaudia Wagner, Pawel Wagner, Damia Mawad, David Officer

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI), Australian Research Centre of Excellence for Electromaterial Science (ACES)


Cholesterol plays an important role in the fluidity of the cell membrane by inserting itself in the lipid bilayer. For this reason, cholesterol has been used as a side- and end- chain substituent on acrylate-based polymers for biomedical applications. These polymers have allowed the self-assembly of micelle structures as liposomes for drug delivery and as a lipid anchor to attach fluorophores to study the cell membrane. Functionalisation of conducting polymers with cholesterol therefore may provide many opportunities for bioelectronic devices, such as acting as an electronic probe that creates intimate contact with cells by slotting into the cell membrane to enhance the biointerface. In this preliminary work, the oxygenated thiophene, EDOT, has been functionalized with cholesterol through nucleophilic substitution of EDOT-CH2OH with cholesteryl chloroformate, and the resulting cholesterol-substituted EDOT (Chol-EDOT) oxidatively polymerized to yield conducting cholesterol-substituted PEDOT (Chol-PEDOT). The properties of Chol-PEDOT are investigated including its potential liquid crystalline properties. The preparation of a water-soluble Chol-PEDOT co-polymer with improved electrical activity in water is demonstrated using Chol-EDOT and water-soluble monomer, EDOT-s.

Chong-Yong Lee

Dr. Chong-Yong Lee is currently a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science/Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong. He received his PhD in Electrochemistry from Monash University Australia under the supervision of Prof. Alan Bond.

Following postdoc studies at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the University of Cambridge (as a BBSRC and Marie Curie Research Fellow), he assumed a University of Wollongong Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellowship position in 2015. His research interests are on electrochemistry, nanomaterials, 3D printing, metalloenzymes, catalysis and solar fuels. He employs electrochemical, photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical approaches for activation of small molecules such as H2O, O2, and CO2 to valuable fuels and chemical feedstocks. Particularly, he is highly enthusiastic in explore novel strategies in clean energy technologies, that he is hoping some of the ideas could contribute towards a more sustainable world.

A robust 3D printed multilayer conductive graphene/polycaprolactone composite electrode

Chong-Yong Lee, Sepidar Sayyar, Paul J. Molino and Gordon G. Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.


3D printing technology has emerged as a platform for rapid prototyping of materials and devices for an extended range of applications. Composite polymer electrodes represent an attractive form of printable materials with task-specific tunability. However, there are currently limited materials available as polymeric-composite electrodes with desirable conductivity and robustness to serve as electromaterials. We report the fabrication of robust and flexible multilayer 3D printed graphene/polycaprolactone composite electrodes consisting of 10 wt% graphene. This represents a new class of printable biodegradable eco-friendly composite electrodes, with inherent conductivity for the electrochemical studies. The electrode biocompatibility is demonstrated by the electrochemical response derived from the diatom microalgae grown on the graphene/polycaprolactone substrate. We propose that the prepared conductive-biodegradable graphene/polycaprolactone composite can also potentially serve as a scaffold for electrical stimulation in promoting tissue formation for regenerative medicine, as well as bioelectronic applications.

Chunyan Qin

Chunyan Qin is currently a PhD candidate in Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI)/ ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), University of Wollongong.

Currently, she focused on the project of “Bipolar electrostimulation-potential wireless cell stimulation”.

Bipolar Electroactive Conducting Polymers for Wireless Cell Stimulation

Chunyan Qin, Zhilian Yue,Yunfeng Chao, Robert J. Forster, Fionn Ó Maolmhuaidh, Xu-Feng Huang, Stephen Beirne, Gordon G. Wallace and Jun Chen

1 ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Squires Way, North

Wollongong, NSW 2519, Australia.


Conventional organic conducting polymers (CPs)-based electrical stimulation (ES) systems have been extensively explored in modulation of cell and tissue functions for biomedical applications. Bipolar electrochemistry could offer an effective pathway to modify these ES systems into a more desirable contactless mode. In this study, we present for the first time the development of a CP-based bipolar electrostimulation (BPES) system for living cells. Polypyrrole (PPy) films with different dopants have been utilised to demonstrate reversible and recoverable bipolar electrochemical activity under a low driving DC voltage (<5.5 V). A BPES prototype enabling wireless and programmable cell stimulation has been devised using PPy co-doped with dextran sulfate (DS) and collagen (PPy-DS/collagen) as a bipolar electrode and rat pheochromocytoma cells as a model cell line. Significantly, wireless stimulation enhances cell proliferation and differentiation. The work establishes a new paradigm for the electrostimulation of living cells using CPs as the bipolar electrodes, which provides an attractive wireless approach to advance the field of medical bionics.

Cuong K. Nguyen

I am currently a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. Douglas MacFarlane and Dr. Alexandr Simonov at Monash University.

My project is developing catalysts for N2 photo(electro)-fixation. I have strong interests in photocatalysts, PEC as well as synthesis of materials for energy conversion applications.

- B.Sc. In Material Science (University of Science- Vietnam): Polymeric materials, Conductive polymers for flexible solar cells.

- M.Sc. in Chemistry (Sogang University – South Korea & KCAP – Korea center for Artificial Photosynthesis): Photocatalyst for water-splitting and CO2 photoreduction.

N2 Photoelectrochemical Fixation on Axis-Oriented, Single-Crystalline Anatase TiO2 Films with Reactive {100} Facets

Cuong K. Nguyen, Alexandr N. Simonov, and Douglas R. MacFarlane

School of Chemistry, Australian Centre for Electromaterials Science, Monash University, Victoria, 3800 Australia


Ammonia (NH3) is an essential chemical in modern society because of its vital role not only in living organisms but in renewable energy resources. A facile, solar-based strategy to produce ammonia in aqueous media under ambient conditions, via N2 reaction with transiently photogenerated H-atoms upon appropriate semiconductor materials is ideal. However, if such materials are to become widely adopted, they must be cheap to produce and operate. Therefore, the development of photo(electro)catalysts for this process that comprise only inexpensive, earth-abundant elements is critical. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is the first used and still most investigated photocatalytic material, as it is stable against photo-corrosion, comparably non-costly, and various nanopowders (pigments) are readily available. Controlling the shapes of nanostructured TiO2 with special morphology and orientation is the key importance in the fabrication of materials with desired properties. Although many chemical and physical methods have been investigated for preparing anatase TiO2 films, including few oriented films with highly reactive {001} anatase facets, deposition of interesting {100} facets-oriented film has rarely been recognized. Herein, we report the facile fabrication and characterization of conceptual {100} plane oriented anatase thin film on transparent conductive substrates by using the combination of the two unique methods (1) manual assembly and (2) the secondary growth of seed layer in the hydrothermal condition for N2 photoelectrochemical reduction application.

Danielle Warren

First year PhD student at the AIIM facility of the University of Wollongong. Studied Medical Neuroscience (BSc) at the University of Sussex, UK and Translational Neuroscience (MSc) at the Julius-Maximillians-Universität in Würzburg, Germany.

Modelling Schizophrenia with iPSCs, 3D Bioprinting techniques & Electrical Stimulation

Danielle Warren, Eva Tomaskovic-Crook, Gordon G. Wallace, Jeremy M. Crook

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) Affiliate


Schizophrenia is a heterogenic neuropsychiatric disease with a complex etiopathology. Bioprinting offers new opportunities to study schizophrenia with patient-donor induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) able to be printed for 3D neural tissue building, disease modelling and therapeutics testing. Through my PhD project I am using 3D bioprinted neural tissues derived from schizophrenia patient- iPSCs to investigate intrinsic disease pathology and electrical stimulation (ES) as a potential adjunct to traditional drug treatments. Modelling includes clinically relevant electrostimulation based on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (tMS). Assessments include cellular and molecular effects of ES during and after iPSC differentiation for neural tissue induction, towards proof-of-concept of in vitro modelling and better understanding of therapeutic brain stimulation.

Emma C. James

Emma is a second year PhD student at the University of Wollongong. Emma obtained a Bachelor of Medical and Health Science (Honours I) (Dean’s Scholar) also at the University of Wollongong with her honours project focusing on electrical stimulation for neural tissue engineering and remodelling.

For her PhD project she is extending this research by investigating the effects of electrical stimulation for cardiac tissue engineering.

Direct Piezoelectricity for Neural and Cardiac Tissue Bioengineering

Emma C. James, Eva Tomaskovic-Crook, Jeremy M. Crook

1 ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, 2500 Wollongong, Australia

[email protected]

Directed differentiation methods allow acquisition of high-purity neural and cardiac tissue derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) which has demonstrated enormous potential for patient-specific, regenerative medicine strategies. However, the immature characteristics of hiPSC-derived tissue remains a significant issue for the field. Electrical stimulation has the potential to augment the induction and function of hiPSC-derived tissue, in particular when combined with 3D cell culture systems. Our proprietary ultrasound-mediated direct piezoelectric (USPZ) stimulation combines high spatial resolution with wireless technology, offering a novel approach to in vitro and in vivo cell stimulation. The technology has a wide range of applications in addition to neural and cardiac tissue engineering including wireless stimulation for restoring damaged tissue and augmented pharmacotherapeutics. We have shown that 3D USPZ provides a workable platform for augmenting 3D neuronal and cardiac induction, as well as proof of concept for other tissue engineering and modelling purposes. The translational applications of physiologically relevant 3D neural and cardiac tissue include disease modelling, drug discovery and cell therapy for regenerative medicine.


PhD student at Deakin University Burwood, Melbourne with masters in materials for energy storage and conversion from Erasmus mundus (MESC+) and bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Pakistan, Mehran UET.

Development of New Redox Electrolytes for Thermal Energy Harvesting Device


Deakin University

[email protected]

Thermal energy harvesting is the process of utilizing freely available heat generated from various sources such as industry, automobile, household appliances and from the human body released in the environment. Converting that heat efficiently into electricity is a big challenge to the scientific community and one of the promising technologies which can be used for harvesting waste heat energy is the thermogalvanic cell or thermocell.

Thermocell is a device consisting of an electrolyte, two electrodes and a redox couple that converts heat energy directly into electricity. Thermocell work is based on principal of the Seebeck effect, which is the potential difference between two electrodes at two different temperatures. Thermocell comprising of aqueous electrolyte containing ferri/ferrocyanide redox couple is one of the most highly studied due to their high Seebeck coefficient, good solubility of redox couples and high current exchange rate on metal electrodes. However, despite all these desirable properties, aqueous electrolyte containing ferri/ferrocyanide suffers from issues like toxicity, leakage, and evaporation, which limits their application in energy devices, especially thermocell.

In this project, new metal centered redox couples are been investigated for thermocell applications. In particular, copper complexes containing bipyridine, phenanthroline and their derivative ligands and different anions are tested for their Seebeck coefficient, thermal stability and electrochemical reversibility. Introduction of copper centered redox couple and organic ionic plastic crystal as solid-state electrolyte for thermocell application is also being studied.

Grishmi Rajbhandari

Grishmi Rajbhandari is a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong. Her research focuses on Coils and Antennas for the Cochlear Implant, in collaboration with Cochlear Limited using additive manufacturing technology and the fabrication of flexible electrode for medical application.

Printed Antenna Coils for Cochlear Implants

Grishmi Rajbhandari, Xiao Liu, Stephen Beirne, Gordon Wallace*

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Innovation Campus, Wollongong NSW 2500


A cochlear implant is a medical device that is surgically placed underneath the skin and within the cochlea of patients who suffer from hearing loss. This device electrically stimulates the hair cells within the cochlea to provide the sensation of sound. The implant coordinates with an external unit comprised of a microphone and a digital signal processor using a transcutaneous radio link established through transmitting and receiving antennas. The receiving antenna within the implant body is the main focus of this body of work. The antennas of currently available cochlear implant devices consist of multi-strand platinum wire in a single turn configuration, encapsulated in a moulded silicon casing. This body of work examines the production of an alternative antenna structure through patterned gold nanoparticle inks deposited onto a biocompatible elastomer via an inkjet printing method.

Dr. Holly Hunt

Holly is a research fellow at the University of Wollongong working within the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science.

Her research focuses on hydrogel preparation and characterisation for various smart material applications along with the preparation and optimisation of various materials for bioprinting.

Ulvan Hydrogels for Wound Healing

Holly Warren, Paul Molino, Kalani Ruburu, Pia Winberg and Gordon Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.

Venus Shell Systems Pty Ltd., Australia.


A wound dressing is deemed to be ideal if it provides hydration, removes excess exudates, is non-toxic and allows for gaseous exchange, among other attributes 1. Hydrogel materials can address these requirements and present an innovative solution to various short-fallings of current commercially available products; however, typical gel-forming biopolymers lack the mechanical robustness required for practical wound-healing applications. In this work, an ulvan-based composite containing nanocellulose and cotton gauze is prepared and characterized both mechanically and for its inherent antibacterial properties. This material has the potential to create a wound dressing which would not need changing for extended periods, when compared to currently available products; enhancing quality of life for those suffering severe burns or skin abrasions.

Inseong Cho

Mr. Inseong Cho works with Prof. Attila Mozer and Prof. Peter Innis at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute within the University of Wollongong the centre of nodes in Australian Centre of Excellence in Electromaterials Science. He studies fundamental electron transfer (ET) between redox-active molecules in the framework of interfacial reactions where one molecule is attached to electrode surfaces and the other is dissolved in electrolytes. In particular, he focuses on structural factors that affect (enhance or slow down) ET kinetics by designing molecular structures of the redox species. He is specialized in characterizing the designed redox-active molecules mainly using transient absorption spectroscopy together with other electrochemical and spectroscopic techniques.

Substrate-dependent electron transfer using selective intermolecular interactions between mixed-ligand cobalt complexes and surface-bound organic molecules

Inseong Cho, Pawel Wagner, Peter C. Innis, Shogo Mori, and Attila J. Mozer

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong, New South Wales 2522

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Mixed redox-electrolytes designed in redox-cascade reaction schemes undergo potential energy loss by electron transfer (ET) between the species. Here, we report substrate-dependent interfacial ET behavior of mixed-ligand electrolytes based on Co2+/3+ complexes having a mixture of dimethyl and dinonyl-substituted bipyridyl ligands. The redox potentials of the mixed-ligand electrolytes are insensitive to the ligand structures. Therefore, effects of the ligand structure on the ET rate at various mixing ratios are studied without changing potential energy of the system. The ET rate decreases with the increasing ratio of the dinonyl-substituted ligands when paired with a ruthenium-complex acceptor (N719), while the ET increases when paired with an alkyl-substituted electron acceptor (MK2). Such a substrate-dependent behaviour of the mixed-ligand electrolytes are explained by selective intermolecular interaction between surface-bound molecules and redox-electrolytes. The results highlight the a priori difficult to predict behavior of mixed redox electrolyte systems and provide a new means to tune ET rates simultaneously at multiple ET interface without potential energy loss.

Jawairia Khan

Jawairia Khan is a materials scientist. She is currently a final year PhD student at University of Wollongong. Her PhD work focusses on “Textile-based Electrofluidics” for point-of-care analysis including electrophoretic separation and diagnostics on 3D textile constructs.

She was awarded four best poster awards during her PhD journey. Her background is textile-chemistry with masters in materials science. She has working experience in both industry and academia and her research interests include point-of-care diagnostics, microfluidics, analytical chemistry, wireless electrochemistry and surface functionalization of textile materials for biomedical application.

Textile-electrofluidics with wireless bipolar electrochemistry: towards low cost and sensitive micro-total-analysis systems

Jawairia Umar Khan, Sepidar Sayyar, Brett Paull, and Peter C. Innis

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, New South Wales 2500, Australia.

Department of Fibre and Textile Technology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan. Email: [email protected]

Point of care testing using micro total analysis systems (µTAS) has made healthcare rapid and robust. However, the two major barriers to its success are the prohibitive cost of microchip fabrication and low sensitivity due to small sample volumes in microfluidic format. First, to potentially reduce the cost, we replaced the microchips with low cost textile substrates which possess inherently built microchannels using the spaces within fibers. Second, the wireless electrochemistry is used for analyte concentration to improve the sensitivity. Here, we demonstrate that the polyester braided structure carrying a small platinum wire in the centre acts as bipolar electrochemical system, that on application of electric field generates the electrophoresis and redox reactions simultaneously on the fiber surface. These electrophoresis and electrochemical reactions on textile surface have used for the preconcentration, separation and isolation of charged analytes. The findings suggest that low cost materials could be combined with bipolar electrochemistry to produce affordable, simple and effective (µTAS).

Jeremy Dinoro

Jeremy graduated with Bachelor of Science (Medical Biotechnology) and Master of Philosophy (Biofabrication) from the University of Wollongong (UOW), followed by a Master of Science at Utrecht University. He is currently undertaking PhD research in 3D printing implants through a joint program between UOW and Anatomics (Melbourne-based Medical Devices company), at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) within the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM) at Wollongong University Innovation Campus. His main focuses have been tissue engineering skin, liver and bone. Throughout his studies he also worked as a business consultant and grant writing at Sprout Scientific along with 8 years experience as a pharmacy technician he also holds a certificate III in pathology

Novel Selective Laser Sintering Approaches for Bone Tissue Engineering

Jeremy Dinoro, Naomi Paxton, Robert Thompson, Zhilian Yue, Stephen Beirne, Mia Woodruff, Gordon Wallace

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, NSW 2519, Australia

[email protected]

Bone defects are known to be difficult to repair due to variabilities in mechanical strength and complex vasculature. Suitable 3D printing technologies are emerging yet must be coupled with advances in materials that are easily processed, tailorable and biocompatible. This work aims to develop a customised platform based on a powder bed fusion technology commonly called selective laser sintering (SLS). The platform was designed to sinter trilobal high density polyethylene (HDPE) particles together with bioactive glass (BaG). Various laser parameters (wavelength, laser velocity and intensity) were explored to establish efficient sintering. Differential scanning calorimetry revealed a narrow ‘sintering window’ for efficient HDPE coalesence. The influence of laser irritation was not deemed detrimental to the polymer following thermal and chemical analysis. Mechanical properties and micro CT analysis showed improved strength from the homogenous distribution of ceramic particles throughout constructs. A stimulated body fluid assay revealed improvements in appetite forming capacity with BaG integration. Additionally, an eight week sub cutaneous in vivo murine model indicated improved tissue ingrowth in porous printed constructs when compared to moulded implants. This custom sintering system has the capacity to match the internal architecture of bone dependent on age, location and site of injury.

Jinshuo Zou

Ms. Jinshuo Zou received her B.S. degree in materials science and engineering from Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China, in 2013 and M. S. degree in materials science and engineering from Tsinghua University, China, in 2017. She is currently a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Chong-Yong Lee and Prof. Gordon G. Wallace at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her major research interests include the synthesis and applications of electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction and oxygen evolution.

Alkalinity promoting formate production from CO2 over a wide electrochemical potential window on a SnS catalyst

Jinshuo Zou, Chong-Yong Lee, Gordon G. Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.


Research trend in electrochemical CO2 reduction has been shifted from the laboratory H-cell to industrial relevant high current density flow-cell. However, it remains to understand the fundamental interplay between the catalyst, and the electrolyte in such configuration towards CO2 reduction performance. Herein, we reported the dramatically alkaline-enhanced CO2 reduction system in a flow-cell for tin sulfide nanosheet electrocatalysts by significantly boosting the electrochemical potential window. A maximum formate Faradaic efficiency of 88 ± 2 % at -1.3 V vs. RHE with the current density of ~ 120 mA cm-2 can be achieved and Faradaic conversion efficiency to formate over 70 % was achieved over -0.5 to -1.5 V (max at ~ 88%), at high current densities. By systematically investigation of the influence of electrolyte, and the SnS catalyst, we find alkalinity plays a key role in suppressing both competitive H2 and CO, which leads to broadening of electrochemical potential windows. It was found sulphur played a role in suppressing H2 evolution. The high current density, wide operating potential, and a long term current stability (30 h) of this system offers a highly attractive and promising route towards industrial-relevant electrocatalytic production of formate from CO2.

Johnson Chung

Dr. Johnson Chung has completed his degree in Materials Science & Engineering and obtained his PhD from The Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering at The University of New South Wales, Australia. He is now part of the Australian National Fabrication facility - materials node looking at 3D cell printing and cartilage regeneration. His research interests include Biomaterials, bioprinting, drug delivery systems and regenerative medicine.

Bioprint scaffolds for Microtia

Steven Posniak, Johnson Chung, Andres Ruland, Payal Mukherjee, Gordon Wallace

aARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong


In Otolaryngology, cartilage forms the skeletal support of the ear, nose and throat but due to limited self-regenerative capacity, cartilage repair and reconstruction is challenging. With 50% of malformations in the head and neck affecting the ear, microtia is the most common ear malformation which could benefit from such innovation1. Bioprinting, a combination of tissue engineering with 3D printing can be an alternative solution to existing autologous grafts and alloplastic implants. In prior work, a “hybrid printing” approach to fabricate scaffolds containing 3 materials (Methacrylated Gelatin (GelMA) - Hyaluronic acid (HA), Polycaprolactone , Lutrol F-127) and Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) showed promising mechanical performance and demonstrated chondrogenesis. MSC are adult stem cells that hold great promise in the field of cartilage regeneration due to their chondrogenic differentiation capability and non-immunogenic nature2. However, in vivo, when not supported by external growth factors, they risk de-differentiation. On the other hand, primary chondroctyes are often limited by cell numbers and loses its phenotype upon multiple expansions. In this study, the effect of co-culture on chondrogenesis was examined and demonstrated promising results that could avoid limitations posed from both cell sources. Furthermore, a non-destructive characterisation tool using ultrasound was utilised to assess chondrogenesis.

1Luquetti DV et al., American journal of medical genetics Part A. 2012;158a(1):124-39 2Gupta PK et al., Stem cell research & therapy. 2012;3(4):25.

Kyuman Kim

Mr. Kyuman is a Ph.D student in Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at University of Wollongong.

A methodology to understand photo-electrochemical behavior in unstable Cu2O photocathode system

Kyuman Kim, Klaudia Wagner and Attila J. Mozer*

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, University of Wollongong, New South Wales 2522


Cu2O has been known as a promising photocathode for water-splitting and CO2 reduction in Photoelectrochemical (PEC) system. However, it is hard to measure catalytic activities on Cu2O photocathode because Cu2O is very unstable in aqueous solution due to the photo-corrosion, leading to the fast decay of PEC performance. For the detection of solar energy conversion products, many researchers have developed photocathode composite using Cu2O with other semiconductors to improve photo-stability of Cu2O while the PEC performance of Cu2O itself still remains as an undisclosed case. In this paper, we introduce a methodology to understand PEC behavior on unstable Cu2O photocathode without the detection of water splitting or CO2 reduction products in Argon and CO2 atmosphere. Correlation map was utilized to discover the relationship between the factors, measured in the process of the electrodeposition of Cu2O and the PEC measurement with 20 identical Cu2O samples. From the map, Cu2O showed strong correlation coefficient between the photocurrent in PEC measurement and the maximum deposition current from electrodeposition. Besides, the trend of correlation on Cu2O was different between Ar and CO2 atmosphere. This methodology would be applicable for any kinds of chemically unstable photocathodes.

Laura Garcia-Quintana

Laura Garcia-Quintana is a 3rd year PhD student at the Institute for Frontier Materials, in Deakin University. Before that, she got her undergrad in Chemistry and Masters in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology both in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has been working in the energy storage field since 2015 when she started studying new spinel-structured nanoparticles as electrode materials for Li-ion batteries.

Currently she is finishing her PhD in electrolytes for Na-O2 batteries, studying how the electrolyte composition affects the electrochemical performance of the oxygen reduction reaction in a Na-O2 battery. She has co-authored 4 papers, and given 2 talks in conferences.

Highly Homogeneous Sodium Superoxide Growth in Na−O2 Batteries Enabled by a Hybrid Electrolyte

Laura Garcia-Quintana,Fangfang Chen, Nagore Ortiz-Vitoriano, Patrick C. Howlett, Maria Forsyth, and Cristina Pozo-Gonzalo

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3200, Australia


The nature of the electrolyte has been demonstrated to be intimately related to the performance of Na-O2 batteries. Thus, organic solvents like glyme-ether based electrolytes show a decrease on the discharge capacity upon alkyl chain length, attributed to the interactions between the electrolyte and the electrogenerated species in the bulk.[1]

Alternatively, ionic liquids (IL) are of interest due to their interesting properties, such as low volatility, low flammability, and wide electrochemical window, among others. In our group, we have reported an increase of the discharge capacity upon concentration of Na salt in the N-butyl-N-methyl pyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide ([C4mpyr][TFSI]) IL, related again to the interactions between the species present in the bulk of the electrolyte.[2]

Using a [C4mpyr][TFSI]:diglyme hybrid electrolyte increases the concentration of Na+ in the IL, and reduces the flammability of the glyme solvent. The presence of the IL has been proven to enhance the cyclability of the battery when compared to the electrolyte with glyme only (ca. 20 vs 5 respectively). Additionally, the IL decreases the generation of side products typically found in glyme-based electrolytes, responsible for the lower reversibility. Furthermore, a relationship between the battery performance, the discharge products deposition and the physicochemical properties has been found, where the presence of free glyme leads to larger deposits delaying the failure of the battery.[3]

[1] L. Lutz, W. Yin, A. Grimaud, D. Alves Dalla Corte, M. Tang, L. Johnson, E. Azaceta, V. Sarou-Kanian, A. Naylor, S. Hamad, The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 2016, 120, 20068-20076.

[2] Y. Zhang, N. Ortiz-Vitoriano, B. a. Acebedo, L. O’Dell, D. R. MacFarlane, T. f. Rojo, M. Forsyth, P. C. Howlett, C. Pozo-Gonzalo, The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 2018, 122, 15276-15286.

[3] a) N. Ortiz-Vitoriano, I. Monterrubio, L. Garcia-Quintana, J. M. López del Amo, F. Chen, T. Rojo, P. C. Howlett, M. Forsyth, C. Pozo-Gonzalo, ACS Energy Letters 2020, 5, 903-909; b) L. García-Quintana, F. Chen, N. Ortiz-Vitoriano, Y. Zhang, L. A. O’Dell, D. R. MacFarlane, M. Forsyth, A. M. Bond, P. C. Howlett, C. Pozo-Gonzalo, Batteries & Supercaps, https://doi.org/10.1002/batt.202000261.

Liang Chen

PhD student from Utas working in Electrofluedics and Diagnostics theme, under the guidance of Prof. Brett Paull

Thread-based isotachophoresis clean-up and trapping of alkaloids using nanoparticle modified thread followed by DESI-MS analysis

Liang Chen, Alireza Ghiasvand, and Brett Paull

Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS), School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart 7001, Australia

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Sciences (ACES), School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia


Desorption electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) has attracted considerable attention due

to its in-situ, rapid, and real-time analysis without the need for additional sample pretreatment. However,

DESI-MS analysis of complex matrices is not possible without sample clean-up and pretreatment. On the

other hand, threads have been used for the fabrication of low-cost, disposable, and eco-friendly

electrophoretic and microfluidic devices recently, due to the unique features. In this research, a thread-based

isotachophoresis (TB-ITP) technique for clean-up of alkaloids (coptisine, berberine and palmatine) in

biological samples was developed and coupled with DESI-MS system for the quantification. A single-string

nylon thread was used as the TB-ITP substrate and terminating and leading electrolytes were 20 mM β-

alaine and 20 mM potassium acetate, respectively. For trapping of the analytes, another nylon string was

modified by chemical bonding of graphene oxide (GO) using bovine serum albumin as the linker. A knot of

the GO-modified thread was put on the TB-ITP thread (1 cm from the leading electrode and 4 cm from the

terminating electrode). The results demonstrated that the GO-modified knot exhaustively trapped the

analytes. It was substantiated that TB-ITP/DESI-MS is a proper technique for complicated sample analysis.

Liang Wu

My PhD focused on the development of 3D printed Electroosmotic Pumps. A negative space FDM-3D printing technique was developed to fabricate capillary structures which were demonstrated to be capable of functioning as a simple electroosmotic pump (EOP) for bio microfluidic applications.

A nylon fibre-based isotachophoresis microfluidic approach for isolation and concentration of nucleic acids

Liang Wu, Vipul Gupta, Peter C. Innis, Brett Paull

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS), School of Natural Sciences I College of Science and Engineering, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania 7001.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia 2522.

Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

A novel low-cost, disposable nylon fibre-based microfluidic device has been developed for the purification and preconcentration of nucleic acids from biological samples. This device, based on an on-fibre isotachophoresis (ITP) focusing method, was assembled by commercially available tightened nylon fibres across a novel and reusable 3D printed electrophoresis platform. The device and electrophoretic approach applied provided for a significant solute focusing band over a 6 cm length fibre within 5 minutes, by focussing fluorescently-labelled solutes from the sample reservoir isotachophoretically. This technique has great potential in the development of multiplexing platforms, allowing to simultaneously process different samples in parallel.

Liangxu Lin

Dr. Lin is currently a Vice-Chancellor Research Fellow at IPRI Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, University of Wollongong.

He completed his PhD in Engineering Materials at the University of Sheffield at Jan. 2014. After two postdoc periods at the University of Exeter, he joined Wuhan University of Science and Technology as a Faculty Member. His research field is in Materials Science and Electrochemistry. He has research focus focuses on 2D interfaces from fundament to electrochemical and bio-science applications.

Unzipping Chemical Bonds of Non-Layered Bulk Structures to Form Ultrathin 2D Nanomaterials

Liangxu Lin, Chan Wu,Andrew Nattestad, Gordon G. Wallace, and Jun Chen

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, Australia Institute for Innovative Materials, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Wollongong 2522,

Australia E-mail: [email protected]

The rich electronic and band structures of monolayered crystals offer versatile physical/chemical properties and subsequently a wide range of applications. Fabrication, particularly by the top-down “exfoliation” processes, rely on the presence of weak Van der Waals force between individual layers. Due to the strong chemical bonds between planes and atoms, un-zipping ultra-thin crystals (from one to several unit cells thick) from non-layered structures is more challenging. This work reports a technique which can be used to prepare such ultra-thin crystals from bulk non-layered structures (ɑ-/β-MnO2, ZnO, TiO2, ɑ-TiB2). The physical and optical properties of these materials are characterized and contrasted against those from their bulk phases. The work presented here represents a tool kit for the preparation of novel 2D non-layered nanomaterials, providing significant contributions to this family of materials, paving the way for even more applications. Furthermore, we show the application of these novel NCs for bio-sensing and electrochemical oxygen reduction.

Malachy Maher Malachy is a final year joint PhD student between UOW and CSIRO. His project aims to investigate the potential of collagen based hydrogels for 3D printing and regenerative medicine.

As a former student in the inaugural intake in the dual Master of Biofabrication degree, between UOW and Utrecht University, he has extensive experience in bioink development, 3D printing technologies, and targeting cellular approaches for clinical solutions.

Comparison of collagen hydrogels for bioprinting and orthopaedic tissue engineering

Malachy Maher, Zhilian Yue, Veronica Glattauer, Timothy C. Hughes, John A.M. Ramshaw and Gordon G. Wallace

[email protected]

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, NSW 2519, Australia,

Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation, Manufacturing Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia,

While gelatin-based hydrogels have become a gold standard in biofabrication, the promise of more native collagen like hydrogels that more closely mimic the extracellular matrix are of great interest. Herein, we compare various sources of collagen, and assess their suitability and potential as bioinks for 3D bioprinting and Biofabrication.

Type I collagen was extracted from porcine and blue grenadier skin by pepsin digestion (removal of telo- peptide) in cold 100mM acetic acid with the pH adjusted to 2.5 with HCl. After removal of residual solids by centrifugation, both collagens were purified by two rounds of precipitation with NaCl added to 0.8 M, followed by dialysis and freeze drying. Using similar protocols to gelatin methacrylation, the collagen’s were methacrylated. The animal derived porcine and marine collagen hydrogels were prepared at 3% w/v. LAP photo-initiator was mixed with samples at 0.05%, and 405 nm light was used for photo-crosslinking. Chemical characterisation used a combination of SDS-PAGE, FTIR, TNBS Assay and Circular Dichroism (CD). The bioink’s physical characteristics were examined through photo-rheology, mechanical testing and nutrient diffusion analysis. The potential of the material to support chondrogenesis was examined by encapsulating hMSC’s and differentiating towards a chondrocyte phenotype.

In order to confirm the purity and stability of the collagen and ensure that polymerization had not occurred, SDS-PAGE, FTIR and CD was used. CD confirmed the stability of the collagen triple helix in all groups of modified collagen, with FTIR indicating greater than 95% collagen : gelatin ratios within the samples. The degree of methacrylation was quantified using TNBS Assay, which indicated consistent functionalization at 50% substitution of amine groups. Varying UV exposure resulted in variable Youngs Moduli, ranging from 5-60kPa. Additionally, shear thinning was exhibited in all samples, and samples had suitable viscosities for extrusion 3D printing. These materials are suitable for use with cells, as evidenced by preliminary cell encapsulation studies.

Collectively, these data suggest that the source of collagen influences the physical properties of the hydrogels. The three materials were capable of creating 3D printed scaffolds with tunable mechanical properties, by adjusting UV exposure. The potential of these materials as a reliable host for many cell types is clear.

Matteo Solazzo

Matteo was awarded his BSc and MSc in Biomedical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. During his Masters Thesis, Matteo performed his research in the laboratory of Prof. William Wagner at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) under the supervision of Prof. Antonio D'Amore, with a project in the field of cardiovascular tissue engineering that resulted in a patent submission. In 2017, he joined the Monaghan Lab in Trinity College Dublin for his PhD at the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering under Dr. Monaghan's supervision. His research focuses on the optimization of electrically conductive biomaterials for building three-dimensional constructs with applications in cardiac tissue engineering and piezoresistive sensors development.

Structural crystallisation of crosslinked 3D PEDOT:PSS anisotropic porous biomaterials to generate highly conductive platforms for tissue engineering applications

Matteo Solazzo and Michael G. Monaghan

Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Biomedical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. [email protected]

Conductive polymers (CPs) are enabling the achievement of smarter electrode coatings, piezoresistive components within biosensors and scaffolds for tissue engineering. Despite their advances in recent years, there exist still some challenges, such as long-term stability in physiological conditions, adequate long-term conductivity and optimal biocompatibility. Additionally, another hurdle to the use of these materials is their adaptation towards three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds; a feature that is usually achieved applying CPs as coating on a bulk material. Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) is by far one of the most promising CPs in terms of its stability and conductivity, with the latter capable of being enhanced via a crystallisation treatment using sulphuric acid. In this work, we present a new generation of 3D electroconductive porous biomaterial scaffolds based on PEDOT:PSS crosslinked via glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane and subjected to a sulphuric acid cystallisation. The resultant isotropic and anisotropic porous scaffolds exhibited, on average, a 1000-fold increase in conductivity when compared with untreated scaffolds. Moreover, we also document precise control over pore microarchitecture, size and anisotropy with high repeatibility to achieve mechanical and electrical anisotropy, while exhibiting adequate biocompatibility. These findings herald a new approach towards generating anisotropic porous biomaterial scaffolds with superior conductivity achieved through a safe and scalable post-treatment.

Md Habibullah Dalal

Md Habibullah Dalal is a PhD student at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI), University of Wollongong Australia, under the supervision of Dr Chong-Yong Lee and Professor Gordon Wallace. Habib’s PhD research project is investigating electrochemical exfoliation of graphite to graphene for catalysis and energy storage applications.

He has developed a new strategy to cathodically exfoliate graphite to graphene in aqueous inorganic salt solutions.

Electrochemical cathodic exfoliation of graphite to graphene in aqueous inorganic salt solutions

Md Habibullah Dalal, Chong-Yong Lee and Gordon G. Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science,

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM, Innovation Campus,

University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia


Electrochemical exfoliation has emerged as a green, effective and scalable route to mass production of graphene. The use of reductive cathodic exfoliation of graphite, offers a direct production of high quality and low defect graphene. Here, we demonstrate for the first time, efficient cathodic electrochemical exfoliation of graphite to graphene in aqueous electrolytes using common and inexpensive alkali-metal salts such as KCl. The key driving force to exfoliate graphite successfully in aqueous electrolyte is applying a sufficiently high voltage, and a high salt concentration which facilitate cation intercalation, and promotes hydrogen evolution to exfoliate the graphene (see Figure 1). The cathodic exfoliated graphene nanoplatelets using KCl aqueous electrolyte exhibits a low defect density (ID/IG of 0.06, a C/O ratio of 57.8), high graphite exfoliation yields (>80%) in short times (< 10 mins for 1cm x 1cm x 0.0254cm electrodes). The high conductive structure consists of 10 to 13 layers graphene sheets that serve as an excellent support material for electrocatalytic reactions. This environment-benign aqueous-based cathodic electrochemical exfoliation of graphite opens a new opportunity in large-scale and low cost production of high quality graphene.

Figure 1 Electrochemical cathodic exfoliation of graphite to graphene

Mitchell St Clair-Glover Mitchell St Clair-Glover is a student at the University of Wollongong currently undertaking a PhD in Medical Science. He has a strong passion for research and is excited by the potential for his work to shape medical treatments in the future. In 2019, he completed an Honours project (Class I) to investigate the generation of a dorsal root ganglia organoid from pluripotent stem cells, aiming to create a model for peripheral sensory nervous tissues. In 2020, Mitchell enrolled in a PhD to extend on his honours project, working with stem cells to create an innervated, organotypic full-thickness skin model. This current project embraces new and evolving tissue engineering technologies, where he will work to combine stem cell-derived neurons, hydrogels, and 3D bioprinting to create a novel skin model for improved burn therapies and wound treatments.

Development of an innervated full thickness human skin model by 3D printing

Mitchell St Clair-Glover, A/Prof Mirella Dottori, Dr Zhilian Yue, Prof Gordon Wallace

Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Fairy Meadow, New South Wales 2519,

Australia Email: [email protected]

Burn is a public health problem impacting over 11 million people worldwide annually. Deep burn injuries also alter the integrity of skin-sensitive innervation and compromise perceptions of touch, temperature, and pain. Incorporation of nervous component into tissue engineered skin constructs could offer a solution to the repair and regeneration of full-thickness skin with improved cutaneous innervation, thereby improving patients’ quality of life. This project aims to develop bioprinting platforms that enable optimal combination of major cellular components of skin, human fibroblasts and keratinocytes, and human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived sensory neurons within a 3D construct. By investigating the survival, proliferation, and differentiation of hESC derived sensory neurons in GelMA hydrogels, we aim to determine the optimal culture conditions required to promote innervation of a 3D skin construct. Findings obtained in this project will provide a basis for development of better cell therapy for burn treatment with improved sensory recovery and wound healing. In this poster, we outline the preliminary testing completed to investigate peripheral sensory neuron differentiation from hESC, and present a planned experimental outline to apply these in a 3D bioprinted skin model.

Nuwan Dhanushka Hegoda Arachchi

Nuwan Hegoda Arachchi is a third year PhD student at Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia. He is following his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Michael J. Higgins and Dr. Paul J. Molino.

In his PhD research project, he utilizes High Speed Atomic Force Microscope (HS-AFM) to explore single molecular level event of proteins on biomaterials, in order to understand protein adsorption process on biomaterial surfaces. He obtained his BSc Degree in Chemistry, Physics and Polymer Science & Technology from University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka and later completed his MSc in Analytical Chemistry from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Since 2016, his research works were contributed to publish six international journal papers.

Fibrinogen and Bovine Serum Albumin Adsorption and Conformational Dynamics on Silica Nanoparticle Based Model Substrates

Nuwan H. Arachchi, Paul J. Molino, Michael J. Higgins

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia


The development of materials for medical devices, including implants, stent and other medical consumables, remains a challenging research area due to the immediate adsorption of proteins onto biomaterial interfaces. Because of the higher surface activity of proteins, this initial protein adsorption occurs rapidly and may prevent other favorable biological interactions. This is particularly an issue for surfaces that come into contact with blood, often resulting in blood coagulation, thrombosis and inflammation. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of initial protein adsorption process is of significant interest to effectively design biomaterials. In this work, we present the use of High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy (HS-AFM) for visualizing dynamic molecular processes of plasma proteins at biomaterial interfaces. In this research, silica nanoparticle-based coating was used as a model substrate, since silica naoparticles are commonly employed by the coating industry and the possibility to functionalize with a series of common surface chemistries (–OH, –CH3, –NH2, –COOH and –F). Fibrinogen and albumin were used as model proteins, as these proteins have been commonly used to study protein adsorption on biomaterial surfaces. The poster will show structural-dynamic processes of single protein molecules on the above silica nanoparticle-based coatings, revealed by the HS-AFM observations of initial protein adsorption.

Sarah L. Higginbottom

Sarah is a first year PhD student at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute at the AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong. P

rior to commencing her PhD, Sarah worked as a research assistant at IPRI after completing her Bachelor of Medical Biotechnology (Honours I) (Dean’s Scholar) in 2018 at the University of Wollongong.

Three-dimensional human brain organoid models for glioblastoma

Sarah L. Higginbottom, Eva Tomaskovic-Crook and Jeremy M. Crook

1ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, Australia

[email protected]

Glioblastoma is the most common and the most aggressive primary malignant brain tumour and remains essentially incurable in children and adults. Despite harsh treatments, survival rates for glioblastoma are among the worst of human cancers and have not substantially improved in decades. Major challenges in the treatment of glioblastoma surround the high degree of heterogeneity within and between tumours, as well as microenvironmental interactions that together drive therapeutic resistance and support glioblastoma progression. Current models are suboptimal, with traditional two-dimensional cell culture platforms unable to recapitulate these critical features of glioblastoma and animal models limited by disparities between human and animal physiology. With the failure of ~95% of preclinical anticancer agents to be approved following clinical trials, recent attention has focused on human three-dimensional tissue modelling in the search for more clinically relevant outcomes. Three-dimensional human pluripotent stem cell-derived brain organoids contain neuronal and glial cell types organised into discrete brain regions, as seen in vivo. Modelling glioblastoma with human brain organoids presents enormous potential in studying glioblastoma invasion and interactions in the brain tumour microenvironment, although is not without challenges. Improvements in organoid culture techniques and their application in studying glioblastoma could thus produce outcomes with greater therapeutic relevance.

Shuai Zhang

Shuai Zhang is currently a PhD candidate in ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) and Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) at the University of Wollongong.

Shuai received a Bachelor degree of Electrical Engineering in 2012 from Agricultural University of Hebei and a Master degree of Micro Nano System Technology in 2017 from South-East University of Norway. His research interests in the area of flexible carbon electrodes, 3D printing electrode materials, and the fabrication of wearable thermocell.

3D Printed All Polymers Wearable Thermo-electrochemical Cells Harvesting Body Heat

Shuai Zhang, Yuqing Liu, Yuetong Zhou, Stephen Beirne, Gordon Wallace, Jun Chen

1ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Squires Way, Fairy Meadow, New South Wales 2519, Australia


With the rapid development of next-generation wearable electronics, such as hand-held portable devices, there is a great demand for lightweight, flexible and environmental friendly energy devices. Among versatile energy devices, wearable thermo-electrochemical cells have attracted increasing interest due to their ability to successively turn human body heat into electrical energy. However, wearable thermocells are still hard to develop because of the difficulty in preparing flexible thermo-electrode materials with robust mechanical properties and excellent electrode performance. In this work, we fabricated flexible conductive polymer electrodes for wearable thermocells via simple 3D printing method, this 3D electrode foam will provide the porous structure which can allow a high degree of electrolyte exposure to the electrode for redox reactions to occur, resulting in increased current and power density. Meanwhile, we also synthesized two types of thermogalvanic gel electrolytes (positive and negative Seebeck coefficients) with good mechanical properties. This wearable thermocells was fabricated in a serial 18 pairs arrays with an output voltage approaching 0.3 V which can charge up different capacitors (△T = 10 K), and power typical commercial LED by utilizing body heat. This work may offer a new train of thought for the development of self-powered wearable systems by harvesting low-grade body heat.

A/Prof Stephen Beirne

A/Prof Beirne was awarded a PhD in Nov 2008, by the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, DCU, Ireland. He is a Principal Fellow at the University of Wollongong’s, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) and an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science.

Since 2010 Dr Beirne has led the development of additive fabrication facilities at IPRI while in the role of Additive Fabrication Manager for the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF – Materials Node). Since 2018 Dr Beirne has had the position of Associate Director of the Translation Research Initiative for Cellular Engineering and Printing (TRICEP). His research focuses on the application of advanced fabrication techniques in the areas of energy and medical bionics through development of additive fabrication strategies, technologies and materials.

Clinically driven biofabrication training systems development

Stephen Beirne*, Cameron Angus, Brodie Leeson, Zhilian Yue, Xiao Liu, Gordon G. Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW 2522, Australia.

[email protected]

Additive fabrication has over the last ten years had a profound impact on materials research, opening new pathways to construct novel structures and enable the undertaking of fundamental research. In this exciting time it has become necessary to tune operating parameters of flagship commercial bioplotter systems and tailor their operation to enable novel materials to be processed. Often, this is not possible, leading to the need for new hardware to be envisaged, developed and tested. The greatest examples of this need have been seen in the bio-additive fabrication space, where the sensitivities of the carrier materials, bio-factors, and live cells, as well as the working environment, have required the development of new means of producing multiple material structures over micro to macro length scales. This body of work focuses on the integrated design approach that has been employed in the realisation of a practical educational and training biofabrication platform (3DREDI) with multi-material functionality that surpasses the capabilities of current market leaders. This platform and associated custom training packages enable the development of new structures with target biomaterials and has been envisaged through previously reported hardware developments guided through clinical end-user engagement and consultation.

Steven Posniak

Steven obtained his Honours degree at UNSW (studied externally at the Victor Chang Research Institute) in 2017. He is now a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong under the supervision of Prof. Gordon Wallace and was awarded the Australian Government Research Training Scholarship.

His current PhD thesis is in “Biofabrication of bioinks to regenerate cartilage for craniofacial reconstructions” that examines bioprinting scaffolds with appropriate tissue constituents to successfully regenerate native cartilage. In particular, looking at methods to fabricate elastic cartilage to better mimic the human ear for patients with microtia.

Co-cultures in 3D Printed Scaffolds for Cartilage Regeneration for Craniofacial Reconstruction

Steven Posniak, Johnson Chung, Xiao Liu, Payal Mukherjee, Gordon Wallace

Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, NSW 2519, Australia


In the field of regenerative medicine, cartilage regeneration and craniofacial reconstruction remains a challenge as traditional methods are unable to adequately replicate the native cartilage tissue [1]. This study investigates an extrusion-based bioprinting approach to mimic and replace injured craniofacial cartilage. Scaffolds were printed via a 3D-BioplotterTM (EnvisionTEC, Gladbeck, Germany) with dimensions of 5mm*5mm*1mm. BM-hMSCs (Bone Marrow-derived Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells) were purchased from Lonza and primary chondrocytes (PC) were acquired from patients with consent. The hydrogel gelatine methacryloyl and methacrylated hyaluronic acid (GelMA/HAMA) was used with a ratio of 5:2 (w/v%) containing 0.03% (w/v%) LAP (Lithium phenyl-2,4,6-trimethylbenzoylphosphinate) as photoinitiator. Scaffolds were printed with BM-hMSCs and PCs at a density of 2.0x106 cells/ml using BM-hMSC:PC ratios of 1:0, 3:1, 1:1 and 0:1 and photocured for 60s using 405nm blue light. Scaffolds were characterized via immunostaining, biochemical analysis and qPCR after 1, 21 and 35 days. MSCs and chondrocytes have numerous advantages and disadvantages when used for cartilage regeneration [2]. By combining these cell types, the disadvantages can be alleviated and produce an improved cartilage-like extracellular matrix. Additionally, this combination of bioprinting and cells successfully created an environment that produces natively-similar chondrocytes which can potentially be used for craniofacial reconstructions.

REFERENCES:

[1] Somoza, R. A. et al. Tissue Engineering Part B: Reviews. 2014; 20:596-608.

[2] Pleumeekers, M.M. et al. PLoS One. 2018; 13(2), p.e0190744t

Sujani B. Y. Abeywardena

Sujani B. Y. Abeywardena obtained her B.Sc. in Chemistry, Statistics and Mathematics from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and later completed her M.Sc. in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the same university with a GPA of 3.6.

She did her M.Phil. (Moisture management of textiles) at University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, during which she published five international journal papers. In July 2019, she started her Ph.D. at Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia, under the supervision of Prof. Peter C. Innis and Dr. Zhilian Yue. Her Ph.D. is on Media/drug delivery and cellular metabolite interactions with threads in gels.

Cell culture on 3D textile based electrofluidic platform

Sujani B. Y. Abeywardena, Zhilian Yue, Peter C. Innis

1ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

[email protected]

Capillary electrophoresis is a promising technique to analyse cell metabolites. One of the key challenges for monitoring of cell culture is the poor real-time analysis of secretions from the cells. Typically, metabolite analyses are based upon an end-point measurement or discrete sample measurements where cells’ secretions analysed well after the event. More importantly, textile structures have rarely been used in these electrofluidic studies as a low cost alternative to expensive fabrication involved in polymer based materials. Textile capillaries eliminate the disadvantages associated with closed capillary channels. In this study, cell culture is integrated with a textile based electrofluidic system with the intention of analyzing metabolites secreted from the cells. Different 3D core-shell textile structures were fabricated in order to identify the best structure, showing the highest mobility and narrower bandwidth of analytes. Different buffers and GelMA were used to explore analytes’ behaviour. A 3D cell culture was created by culturing cells in an extra cellular matrix, GelMA, which was then integrated with a textile platform. Cell viability and proliferation against the cytocompatible buffer were measured and a cell viable electric field was used in the electrophoresis analysis.

Sulokshana Marks

Sulokshana Marks is a first year PhD student at The University of Wollongong. She recently completed her masters in Biofabrication (University of Wollongong) and was working mainly around Biomaterials, in-depth characterizations and additive manufacturing fabrication techniques to develop a new biomaterial ink towards wound healing application.

For her PhD project she would be working around piezoelectric biomaterials and will apply the knowledge of fabrication technique and development of materials to explore the effect of piezoelectricity towards contactless stimulation of cells for tissue regeneration. She is a double B.Sc graduate in chemistry at University of Sri Jayewardenepura and at College of Chemical Sciences (institute of Chemistry, Ceylon), Sri Lanka. An exhilarating career in the field of chemistry related to biomedical area has always been her dream.

Understanding and optimisation of Chitosan based hydrogels for 3D printing

Sulokshana Marks, Zhilian Yue, Xifang Chen, Michael Higgins, Gordan Wallace

ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI), AIIM Facility, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia 2522

Presenting author: [email protected]

3D printing promises to provide a significant breakthrough in the field of tissue engineering. However, the primary limitation of biomaterials ink/bioink inventory and lack of clarity around a unified systematic screening for the development of biomaterial inks have frequently been cited as a major issue that limits its potential. The present study tries to address this by developing a biomaterial ink composition while outlining a framework for evaluating printability for extrusion-based printing. The developed biomaterial ink is based on a photo-curable chitosan (ChiMA) and methyl cellulose (MC), with the latter serving as a rheological modifier. An ‘ideal’ ink should satisfy both biological and physical/mechanical requirements of the printing process. To check these requirements, potential ink formulations were made and evaluated using three screening tests on flow properties, physicochemical properties, and layer stacking ability. Two ink formulations out of an initial twelve were further analysed for their rheology, degradability, print evaluation and preliminary cytocompatibility, leading to a candidate biomaterial ink formulation. In addition, a printability assessment demonstrated the candidate ink’s excellent shear thinning, rapid gelation and ability for retention of the structural integrity until post curing, confirming its utilization in extrusion based 3D printing. This printability assessment was combined with a previously developed mathematical model to narrow down the ideal operating parameters of the extrusion printing by calculating the extrusion velocity using the shear thinning coefficients and printer operating variables (Pressure, needle dimensions). Formulated inks printability was then demonstrated by printing geometries with versatile shapes such as star shape and circles. The scaffolds printed with ChiMA/MC inks showed adequate cytocompatibility for human dermo fibroblasts but with limited matrix adhesion and proliferation.)

Thomas Blesch

Thomas studied Chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Germany) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). His B.Sc. thesis focused on organic radical batteries and his M.Sc. thesis on lithium-ion batteries, the latter carried out in the BMW Group labs in Munich (Germany).

Since 2018, he is conducting his PhD studies focused on redox flow batteries at the Monash University Melbourne (Australia) and the ARC Australian Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science.

Symmetric, Non-aqueous Redox Flow Battery based on Iron Complexes

Thomas Blesch, Diogo M. Cabral, Shuo Dong, Patrick C. Howlett, Douglas R. MacFarlane

ARC Australian Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Monash University


Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are seen as an alternative to lithium-ion technology for the storage of excess renewable energy from domestic- to grid-scale. Positive and negative electrolytes are (dis)charged on electrodes separated by a membrane and stored in external tanks, which enables flexible scalability of power and energy density. Symmetric cells utilizing the same electrolyte on both sides avoid cross-contamination and only lose efficiency in case of mixing through the membrane, but require materials with at least three accessible redox states. Metal complexes with non-innocent ligands can meet this requirement and utilize the electrochemical window of aprotic solvents for increased energy density, but often suffer from low solubility [1].

We are working on a system based on the iron-tris(2,2’-bipyridine) bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide complex [2] which shows one metal-centered oxidation and up to three ligand-centered reductions, providing a symmetric RFB with 2.4 V cell potential. However, these processes have been shown to be solvent-dependent [3] and the electrochemistry in different solvents and mixtures was studied. Properties like density, viscosity and conductivity were measured over a temperature range as well as the solubility of the active material in all states of charge. Further points like cost, safety and environmental impact were considered as well.

[1] D. Cabral et al., Electrochim. Acta 2015, 180, 419–426.

[2] J. Mun et al., J. Electrochem. Soc. 2018, 165, 215-219.

[3] D. M. Cabral, P. C. Howlett, D. R. MacFarlane, Electrochim. Acta 2016, 220, 347-353.

Yuetong Zhou

Mr. Yuetong Zhou is a PhD student of the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) at the University of Wollongong.

He finished the Bachelor degree from Tianjin Normal University in 2015 and Master degree from University of Wollongong in 2018. His research focuses on the design and development of flexible redox-gel integrated electrode.

The significance of supporting electrolyte on Poly (vinyl alcohol) - iron(II)/iron(III) solid-state electrolytes for wearable thermo-electrochemical cells

Yuetong Zhou, Yuqing Liu, Mark A. Buckingham, Shuai Zhang, Leigh Aldous, Stephen Beirne, Gordon Wallace, Jun Chen

1Intelligent Polymer Research Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia


Calibri 11 point (200 words maximum) Thermo-electrochemical cells (known as thermocells) can convert heat energy into electric power through redox reactions driven by the presence of a temperature gradient. Low-grade heat from the human body can be harvested using thermocells containing a suitable electrolyte, such as the iron(II)/iron(III) chloride redox couple housed in poly (vinyl alcohol) described here. However, conventionally the thermo-electrochemical performance of gelled electrolytes is poor, due to slow ionic transport and high charge transfer resistance. In this report, hydrochloric acid has been found synergistically decrease charge transfer resistance of the redox reaction, whilst doubling the tensile properties of the gel housing. Moreover, the individual thermocells have been connected in parallel to enhance current output.

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