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Margarethe Hauck visiting Prof. Jaana Vapaavuori's group to study the conductive hydrogels

  • Joanna Witos
  • Aug 18, 2022
  • 1 min read

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.







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