Doctoral candidate Margarethe Hauck from Kiel University, Germany, visited Aalto via FinnCERES GoGlobal Programme. She worked under the supervision of Professor Jaana Vapaavuori in a project dealing with the conductive hydrogels for wearable energy storage devices and sensors.
Biowaste-derived materials such as cellulose or pectin are promising materials for biocompatible and biodegradable applications. In previous work, a method based on tetrapodal zinc oxide (t-ZnO) was developed to prepare micro-engineered electrically conductive hydrogels with extremely low filler concentration of exfoliated graphene (EG). This fabrication method was transferred to cellulose- and pectin-based hydrogels. For this, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) with different surface charges as well as pectin powder were tested in combination with varying ions as physical cross-linking agents. The obtained composite could, e.g., be applied for biocompatible energy storage systems such as supercapacitors.
