[Music]
okay hi we’ve had some really good talks
about babies and dreams haven’t we so
I’m going to along those same lines I’m
going to share with you two of my
biggest dreams one is to get my
three-year-old daughter to pick her toys
up off the floor
I’m always tripping on I’m stuffing my
toes
thank you yes okay that’s a big dream
second dream is to find a way to get
free clean power to everyone in 1440 the
printing press revolutionized the world
by bringing the printed word to everyone
today we’re reaching a point in history
where printed electronics could bring
technology to everyone what do you think
of printing what comes to mind paper oh
it’s my to-do list let’s see hold on
just a second TEDx talk okay
good check on that call mom on our
birthday forget anyway printing can be
as thin as paper cheap lightweight and
flexible what do you think of
electronics what do you picture not any
of those things we do have printed
circuit boards where patterns of wires
are cheaply and quickly deposited and
this small innovation has drastically
reduced the cost of our devices but then
we take our this thin lightweight
framework and we attach inflexible
electronic components to it and we do it
on an inflexible fiberglass board think
of computers TVs solar panels and
calculators you can’t roll them up and
they’re confined to bulky and heavy
plastic cases does it have to be this
way can we free our electronics what
problems could we solve by doing this
energy is one of the most pressing
challenges of our time could we replace
our large awkward rectangular solar
panels mounted on roof racks with
printed ultra thin solar films
integrated into your roof tiles your
windows your cars and even your clothing
at a fraction of the cost from a young
age I had a vision of free clean power
for everyone now I know that of all the
renewable energy options Solar is the
only one with enough potential to exceed
even our future global power demand
solar power is a really nice financial
benefit for homeowners but not for
everybody else in order to make it more
accessible we need to drive the price
way down and seamlessly integrate it
into our everyday life for example would
it be possible to redesign this
calculator it’s almost obsolete and
reprint this whole thing on the first
page of a book let’s find out for this
we’re going to need to consider printing
the component devices that you here see
here soldered on to the circuit board as
if they’re an afterthought the solar
cell the the battery the LEDs these
seemingly complex solid C devices are
actually rather simple and scientists
have now been able to build them
ultra-thin lightweight and flexible the
trick now is not building them it’s
getting the material that you want where
you want it cheaply
that’s what printing comes in the
building block materials for electronics
can be found on the periodic table
metals are conductors because they
transport electric charge just as they
are if you pair up a metal and nonmetal
you might be building a semiconductor
and semiconductors are super important
for electronics because they behave like
metals but only if you turn them on with
a light heat or a voltage metals and
semiconductors provide the framework for
electronics because they’re effective
and stable but if you want to print
these tough materials though you run
into a major problem for example let’s
say you wanted to inkjet print a copper
wire on a piece of paper how would you
do it oh I know let’s mix copper powder
in water printer ink is made that way
but Wawa that’s not gonna work it
doesn’t dissolve okay mmm hey let’s pour
off the water and melt the copper well
copper melts at a thousand degrees
Celsius so you could do this and print
it in the pattern but the moment that
the molten copper drips onto the page
your paper would burst into flames
okay hang on copper we’re going to solve
this problem for you we’re gonna break
down our macroscale into extremely small
parts macro scale is a scale that we
live on and interact with we all know
about feet and inches right well in
science we like to use meters and
centimeters we’re going to break it down
into nanometers one billion times
smaller than a meter we need to travel
down past our macro scale where we feel
comfortable beyond an ant and a grain of
sand past the thickness of human hair
and the smallest thing you can see
beyond bacteria and viruses and even our
DNA and we entered the scale of
nanometers let’s pause to appreciate the
enormous change of scale this is what 10
to the negative 9 meters looks like the
size of molecules we step into the scale
we enter a new world down here the laws
of nature change this image resembles a
silicon moon rising over a desert
landscape of silicon pyramids this is a
side of a cliff formed from a mountain
of bismuth ferrite you might imagine
that somebody lives on this cliff but
nobody does this is an orchard of copper
nickel alloy and nano trees when you
make things this small a really magical
thing happens the material becomes
soluble in liquids but they need a
little extra help let’s take a cubic
centimeter of copper metal for example
hey copper remember him you look good as
a cube we were about to let copper metal
burn a hole through a piece of paper
come on let’s see if we can find a
better way to print him if you break
this up into a thousand trillion pieces
each
nanometre you still have an insoluble
powder that doesn’t dissolve but if you
add a temporary organic molecular shell
now can interact with a solvent and
disperse we have just taken our
insoluble metals and semiconductors and
made them into printable liquids this is
not just a pigment anymore it’s a
functional ink how do you make these
well for this you’re gonna need a team
of experts here are some of my students
at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland who
have developed advanced in organic
synthesis techniques in the laboratory
each one is an expert in their
synthesizing their own ink with the
right size and shape for example Elaina
in the middle is our nanowire synthesis
expert and hopefully she’ll be able to
train incoming first-year students and
pass down our magical synthesis skills
once you get the ink you can deposit it
on a surface like a car or a wall or a
piece of paper now you have a dried
clump of hairy little ink cubes and
below it’s a representation of that on
the film on a surface at that point you
can take the hairs off and you have a
highly packed highly dense blanket of
nano crystals you notice the film gets
darker because it’s trapping more light
within it now you reach a point where
you can now rebuild your macro scale
material into a single crystal now
electrons can flow freely through that
whole block and they don’t have to jump
from one nano crystal to the next and
you did it now we’ve got copper on on
paper at room temperature it would be so
lit right now if we could see this IRL
lol that was for my students for
everybody else translation for me –
wouldn’t it be neat to watch a video of
the printing process in real life ha ha
ha my students load their custom inks
into the cartridge to rapidly print
films of nano crystals on paper this
process is excellent for thinking about
scaling up because it’s fast easy and
very precise since it’s fully automated
we’re not concerned with human error and
we can think ahead to large-scale
roll-to-roll printing electronics just
like we print newspapers think
lots of really cheap solar power really
fast that’s the dream this is a pattern
we designed for testing printable solar
cells we lay down a few strips of metal
had some semiconducting layers on top
and then cap it with a few more strips
of metal this is what it looks like
built on glass this one is the first
fully solution processed in organic
solar cell in the world that we know of
it has been stable for years we want to
test this in the lab block out all the
other layer all the other devices except
for one shine light on it and make
contact with the top and bottom metal
electrodes and you can measure its
device properties we use the data we
record here to decide what to change
when we go back into the lab basic solar
cell has four layers we can print layer
by layer on top of each other start with
a metal layer two semiconducting layers
in between and then end with the metal
if you electrically connect the top and
bottom metal layers expose this to light
you can power something because now
electrons are flowing through the solar
cell if you notice the scale bar here is
a micrometer one millionth of a meter
these devices are ultra thin 50 times
thinner than the human hair so what can
we do with this this is a bird’s eye
view of that same device so let’s print
it on paper can we power something with
it like a battery batteries have the
positive and negative charge – just like
a solar cell they have alternating thin
films just like a solar cell so can a
battery be printed – yeah as it turns
out batteries can be printed as well
here is an example just one where
researchers printed the thin films
charge storage device and it powers an
LED so can we print an LED and have it
be powered by this battery yeah
researchers have printed fully printed
flexible LEDs and now we’ve envisioned
printing them all on one piece of paper
together can we take a little bit
further
we have a fully printable keypad that
routes through a printable
microcontroller and displays our data on
the LED screen now your typical
calculator or is just a piece of paper I
can’t tell anymore already we’re pushing
the boundaries of what’s possible
merchant electronics could enhance human
health by integrating vital sign
monitoring in two heute into clothing
electronic text house could bring about
a new era of fashion with interwoven
LEDs the possibilities are exciting but
let’s give it a little depth keep this
going
that brings us to 3d printing max is our
3d printing guy he’ll tell you that what
we’ve been talking about so far has been
2d printing 3d printing is different to
put in perspective here is a thin film
solar cell that researchers placed on a
soap bubble it’s like it’s not even
there in contrast 3d printing builds 3d
structures this relatively new
technology has really taken off young
people are designing and building new
and fantastical structures that exceed
the capability human hands you can just
print anything that your mind events
basically this is just a series of
random letters that we picked for no
reason it’s really cool right but you
can print tools machines shoes food
entire buildings that’s been done I just
saw a news article where they printed
living human baby that’s not real that’s
not worry that’s not real but the other
ones are real that was a real the
materials that you use can be rigid
flexible transparent glow-in-the-dark or
all the above so anything that your mind
invents you can bring to reality now
they’re all on the same page no pun
intended because I guess I’m obsessed
with paper or something the big really
exciting question is can we pair up our
2d very thin electronic printing with 3d
structural printing embedded
electronics with structure built from
the bottom up automated printing like
this could provide an opportunity for
elegant design this pairing these two
printing techniques may be the future of
manufacturing I imagine that these will
be challenges for our students as they
find their own path
nanotechnology and material science are
rapidly expanding fields of pure and
applied study throughout the world and
we are fostering that at Saint Mary’s
College and our students should be a
part of the discussion on a local and
global scale to enact change in energy
clean water climate change and medicine
for this year for this reason last year
my colleagues and I launched the
material science program at Saint Mary’s
College to offer our students the tools
they need to address some of the world’s
most pressing challenges at Saint Mary’s
College we have developed a culture of
undergraduate research while the
students are earning a well-rounded
liberal arts degree they’re also getting
into the lab thinking critically and
problem-solving their way through
research projects that most people
wouldn’t experience until their PhD and
this work would not be possible without
them a research group is also creating
change locally by teaming up the
community to realize our dream for
printed solar solar tech Inc is a salt
is a founded by st. Mary’s alumni is a
Southern Maryland base yeah is a
Southern Maryland based company
motivated to redesign how we imagine
personal solar power solar tech is
investing in the future of our students
by offering them opportunities to work
on really cool projects while they
interact with industry students like
Nick who has developed invaluable
printing processes in our lab and has
benefited from this so low tech is also
keeping a local and plan to build jobs
in Southern Maryland
and partnerships like this are
developing right in your backyard and
you might not even know it so a message
to high school students from us keep
dreaming about the possibilities your
free mind on obscure by the world is a
gift when you get to college with the
support of faculty mentors keep your
research dream active and and deeply
investigate your core passions when you
get older and reflect on your life
remember the support that you had to
achieve your goals you may be able to
foster a sense of purpose and young
dreamers and invest in the future of
innovations so while I may never get my
kids to pick their toys up off the floor
while we’re still struggling with that
big dream we might just save the world
in the mean time who knows I don’t know
what you will invent or share with the
world but I hope that our journey
inspires you to take a chance with your
ideas walk to the center stage thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
you
okay hi we’ve had some really good talks
about babies and dreams haven’t we so
I’m going to along those same lines I’m
going to share with you two of my
biggest dreams one is to get my
three-year-old daughter to pick her toys
up off the floor
I’m always tripping on I’m stuffing my
toes
thank you yes okay that’s a big dream
second dream is to find a way to get
free clean power to everyone in 1440 the
printing press revolutionized the world
by bringing the printed word to everyone
today we’re reaching a point in history
where printed electronics could bring
technology to everyone what do you think
of printing what comes to mind paper oh
it’s my to-do list let’s see hold on
just a second TEDx talk okay
good check on that call mom on our
birthday forget anyway printing can be
as thin as paper cheap lightweight and
flexible what do you think of
electronics what do you picture not any
of those things we do have printed
circuit boards where patterns of wires
are cheaply and quickly deposited and
this small innovation has drastically
reduced the cost of our devices but then
we take our this thin lightweight
framework and we attach inflexible
electronic components to it and we do it
on an inflexible fiberglass board think
of computers TVs solar panels and
calculators you can’t roll them up and
they’re confined to bulky and heavy
plastic cases does it have to be this
way can we free our electronics what
problems could we solve by doing this
energy is one of the most pressing
challenges of our time could we replace
our large awkward rectangular solar
panels mounted on roof racks with
printed ultra thin solar films
integrated into your roof tiles your
windows your cars and even your clothing
at a fraction of the cost from a young
age I had a vision of free clean power
for everyone now I know that of all the
renewable energy options Solar is the
only one with enough potential to exceed
even our future global power demand
solar power is a really nice financial
benefit for homeowners but not for
everybody else in order to make it more
accessible we need to drive the price
way down and seamlessly integrate it
into our everyday life for example would
it be possible to redesign this
calculator it’s almost obsolete and
reprint this whole thing on the first
page of a book let’s find out for this
we’re going to need to consider printing
the component devices that you here see
here soldered on to the circuit board as
if they’re an afterthought the solar
cell the the battery the LEDs these
seemingly complex solid C devices are
actually rather simple and scientists
have now been able to build them
ultra-thin lightweight and flexible the
trick now is not building them it’s
getting the material that you want where
you want it cheaply
that’s what printing comes in the
building block materials for electronics
can be found on the periodic table
metals are conductors because they
transport electric charge just as they
are if you pair up a metal and nonmetal
you might be building a semiconductor
and semiconductors are super important
for electronics because they behave like
metals but only if you turn them on with
a light heat or a voltage metals and
semiconductors provide the framework for
electronics because they’re effective
and stable but if you want to print
these tough materials though you run
into a major problem for example let’s
say you wanted to inkjet print a copper
wire on a piece of paper how would you
do it oh I know let’s mix copper powder
in water printer ink is made that way
but Wawa that’s not gonna work it
doesn’t dissolve okay mmm hey let’s pour
off the water and melt the copper well
copper melts at a thousand degrees
Celsius so you could do this and print
it in the pattern but the moment that
the molten copper drips onto the page
your paper would burst into flames
okay hang on copper we’re going to solve
this problem for you we’re gonna break
down our macroscale into extremely small
parts macro scale is a scale that we
live on and interact with we all know
about feet and inches right well in
science we like to use meters and
centimeters we’re going to break it down
into nanometers one billion times
smaller than a meter we need to travel
down past our macro scale where we feel
comfortable beyond an ant and a grain of
sand past the thickness of human hair
and the smallest thing you can see
beyond bacteria and viruses and even our
DNA and we entered the scale of
nanometers let’s pause to appreciate the
enormous change of scale this is what 10
to the negative 9 meters looks like the
size of molecules we step into the scale
we enter a new world down here the laws
of nature change this image resembles a
silicon moon rising over a desert
landscape of silicon pyramids this is a
side of a cliff formed from a mountain
of bismuth ferrite you might imagine
that somebody lives on this cliff but
nobody does this is an orchard of copper
nickel alloy and nano trees when you
make things this small a really magical
thing happens the material becomes
soluble in liquids but they need a
little extra help let’s take a cubic
centimeter of copper metal for example
hey copper remember him you look good as
a cube we were about to let copper metal
burn a hole through a piece of paper
come on let’s see if we can find a
better way to print him if you break
this up into a thousand trillion pieces
each
nanometre you still have an insoluble
powder that doesn’t dissolve but if you
add a temporary organic molecular shell
now can interact with a solvent and
disperse we have just taken our
insoluble metals and semiconductors and
made them into printable liquids this is
not just a pigment anymore it’s a
functional ink how do you make these
well for this you’re gonna need a team
of experts here are some of my students
at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland who
have developed advanced in organic
synthesis techniques in the laboratory
each one is an expert in their
synthesizing their own ink with the
right size and shape for example Elaina
in the middle is our nanowire synthesis
expert and hopefully she’ll be able to
train incoming first-year students and
pass down our magical synthesis skills
once you get the ink you can deposit it
on a surface like a car or a wall or a
piece of paper now you have a dried
clump of hairy little ink cubes and
below it’s a representation of that on
the film on a surface at that point you
can take the hairs off and you have a
highly packed highly dense blanket of
nano crystals you notice the film gets
darker because it’s trapping more light
within it now you reach a point where
you can now rebuild your macro scale
material into a single crystal now
electrons can flow freely through that
whole block and they don’t have to jump
from one nano crystal to the next and
you did it now we’ve got copper on on
paper at room temperature it would be so
lit right now if we could see this IRL
lol that was for my students for
everybody else translation for me –
wouldn’t it be neat to watch a video of
the printing process in real life ha ha
ha my students load their custom inks
into the cartridge to rapidly print
films of nano crystals on paper this
process is excellent for thinking about
scaling up because it’s fast easy and
very precise since it’s fully automated
we’re not concerned with human error and
we can think ahead to large-scale
roll-to-roll printing electronics just
like we print newspapers think
lots of really cheap solar power really
fast that’s the dream this is a pattern
we designed for testing printable solar
cells we lay down a few strips of metal
had some semiconducting layers on top
and then cap it with a few more strips
of metal this is what it looks like
built on glass this one is the first
fully solution processed in organic
solar cell in the world that we know of
it has been stable for years we want to
test this in the lab block out all the
other layer all the other devices except
for one shine light on it and make
contact with the top and bottom metal
electrodes and you can measure its
device properties we use the data we
record here to decide what to change
when we go back into the lab basic solar
cell has four layers we can print layer
by layer on top of each other start with
a metal layer two semiconducting layers
in between and then end with the metal
if you electrically connect the top and
bottom metal layers expose this to light
you can power something because now
electrons are flowing through the solar
cell if you notice the scale bar here is
a micrometer one millionth of a meter
these devices are ultra thin 50 times
thinner than the human hair so what can
we do with this this is a bird’s eye
view of that same device so let’s print
it on paper can we power something with
it like a battery batteries have the
positive and negative charge – just like
a solar cell they have alternating thin
films just like a solar cell so can a
battery be printed – yeah as it turns
out batteries can be printed as well
here is an example just one where
researchers printed the thin films
charge storage device and it powers an
LED so can we print an LED and have it
be powered by this battery yeah
researchers have printed fully printed
flexible LEDs and now we’ve envisioned
printing them all on one piece of paper
together can we take a little bit
further
we have a fully printable keypad that
routes through a printable
microcontroller and displays our data on
the LED screen now your typical
calculator or is just a piece of paper I
can’t tell anymore already we’re pushing
the boundaries of what’s possible
merchant electronics could enhance human
health by integrating vital sign
monitoring in two heute into clothing
electronic text house could bring about
a new era of fashion with interwoven
LEDs the possibilities are exciting but
let’s give it a little depth keep this
going
that brings us to 3d printing max is our
3d printing guy he’ll tell you that what
we’ve been talking about so far has been
2d printing 3d printing is different to
put in perspective here is a thin film
solar cell that researchers placed on a
soap bubble it’s like it’s not even
there in contrast 3d printing builds 3d
structures this relatively new
technology has really taken off young
people are designing and building new
and fantastical structures that exceed
the capability human hands you can just
print anything that your mind events
basically this is just a series of
random letters that we picked for no
reason it’s really cool right but you
can print tools machines shoes food
entire buildings that’s been done I just
saw a news article where they printed
living human baby that’s not real that’s
not worry that’s not real but the other
ones are real that was a real the
materials that you use can be rigid
flexible transparent glow-in-the-dark or
all the above so anything that your mind
invents you can bring to reality now
they’re all on the same page no pun
intended because I guess I’m obsessed
with paper or something the big really
exciting question is can we pair up our
2d very thin electronic printing with 3d
structural printing embedded
electronics with structure built from
the bottom up automated printing like
this could provide an opportunity for
elegant design this pairing these two
printing techniques may be the future of
manufacturing I imagine that these will
be challenges for our students as they
find their own path
nanotechnology and material science are
rapidly expanding fields of pure and
applied study throughout the world and
we are fostering that at Saint Mary’s
College and our students should be a
part of the discussion on a local and
global scale to enact change in energy
clean water climate change and medicine
for this year for this reason last year
my colleagues and I launched the
material science program at Saint Mary’s
College to offer our students the tools
they need to address some of the world’s
most pressing challenges at Saint Mary’s
College we have developed a culture of
undergraduate research while the
students are earning a well-rounded
liberal arts degree they’re also getting
into the lab thinking critically and
problem-solving their way through
research projects that most people
wouldn’t experience until their PhD and
this work would not be possible without
them a research group is also creating
change locally by teaming up the
community to realize our dream for
printed solar solar tech Inc is a salt
is a founded by st. Mary’s alumni is a
Southern Maryland base yeah is a
Southern Maryland based company
motivated to redesign how we imagine
personal solar power solar tech is
investing in the future of our students
by offering them opportunities to work
on really cool projects while they
interact with industry students like
Nick who has developed invaluable
printing processes in our lab and has
benefited from this so low tech is also
keeping a local and plan to build jobs
in Southern Maryland
and partnerships like this are
developing right in your backyard and
you might not even know it so a message
to high school students from us keep
dreaming about the possibilities your
free mind on obscure by the world is a
gift when you get to college with the
support of faculty mentors keep your
research dream active and and deeply
investigate your core passions when you
get older and reflect on your life
remember the support that you had to
achieve your goals you may be able to
foster a sense of purpose and young
dreamers and invest in the future of
innovations so while I may never get my
kids to pick their toys up off the floor
while we’re still struggling with that
big dream we might just save the world
in the mean time who knows I don’t know
what you will invent or share with the
world but I hope that our journey
inspires you to take a chance with your
ideas walk to the center stage thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
you
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