The Speaking of Chemistry Road Trip is rolling on through the Golden State. We’ve traveled
the grueling five and a half miles from Redwood City to Stanford University to visit the lab
of Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer whose team is trying to do huge things with tiny materials.
Zhenan Bao: So our goal is to transform the future of electronic devices.
Matt: Zhenan’s team is designing smart materials for electronic devices to do things that haven’t
been possible before. Take this electronic skin that could help patients with prosthetic
limbs regain a sense of touch. How do you make electronic skin? Teamwork. I know. I
know. That sounds so cliche, but trust me. It won’t after you see how Zhenan’s lab works.
And the electronic skin is a perfect example of that. PhD student Alex Chortos demo’d
a prototype skin for us. It's this thing that kinda looks like a more scientific and purple version of the Power Glove.
The electronic skin on the purple glove has pressure pads on each fingertip. These pressure
pads are made from a mixture that Zhenan’s team developed that includes carbon nanotubes
and a stretchy polymer. As Alex presses down on the pads, the electrical conductance of
that nanotube-polymer composite changes, converting pressure changes into electrical signals.
The skin’s foundation is a clear, flexible polymer, but the wires inside the polymer
need to be bendy and stretchy, too. To make these, the team used long, narrow silver nanowires.
The wires are not stretchy themselves, but they do allow the team to create a flexible,
conductive network.
Alex: So although the network is being stretched, the individual materials are not being broken
or stretched. Noel: They kind of stay together because there’s
so many of them so close together? Is that the idea?
Alex: Yeah.
Matt: So how do they get the silver network and the carbon nanotube sensors into the same
platform? Well, like I said before, teamwork.
Alex: Collaborating with people who really know what they’re doing is really important
for a project like this. You definitely have to rely on the people that you work with because
you can’t be an expert in everything.
Matt: Which brings us to Francisco Molina Lopez, an expert at using what might be the
world’s fanciest inkjet printer. Francisco uses it to print the electronic materials
concocted by Zhenan’s team.
Francisco: My colleagues here, they design the material and then together we formulate the
ink to have the right parameters to be printable. And all the inks that we have, once they dry, they’re
also stretchable, so they will comply with the substrate.
Matt: Although prosthetic skin is Zhenan’s long-term goal, both she and her team are well
aware that these materials could have near-term applications as well. Dig, if you will, this
sensor. It’s tracking PhD student Amanda Nguyen’s pulse. Wearable devices like this
one could be used to track and transmit a patient’s health information in real-time.
Zhenan: We don’t design our research for the purpose of commercialization. But at the
same time, as we develop materials and devices and new technology, I would also like to see
such inventions get actually used. That’s how my first company was started.
Matt: Being in Silicon Valley certainly helps foster an entrepreneurial spirit. This setting
allows Zhenan’s team to get feedback from its industrial neighbors as it develops
new materials and devices at Stanford.
Amanda: I think it’s a pretty unique environment, yes. It kind of gives you an idea of what are the parameters
that you want to focus in on to optimize so you can meet these industry needs. It’s nice to do research
and know there’s a target application for it, right?
Matt: Beyond bridging academia and industry, Zhenan’s team also spans departmental divides,
as well. Her group is made up of scientists with all sorts of backgrounds. This is intentional
and Zhenan really developed this collaborative philosophy while working at the historic Bell
Labs, which is kind of like science’s version of Camelot. Although it may not maintain its
former prestige, Bell Labs legacy is downright magical. Even if you don’t know the Bell
Labs’ name, you know its technology. For instance, you may have heard of the transistor or the laser.
And Bell Labs can claim more than a dozen Nobel Laureates and even an Academy Award winner.
So if you don't know, now you do know.
Zhenan: Bell Labs was such an exciting place to work in. I worked side-by-side with the
best in the world.
Matt: But there’s a dark twist in the story of Bell Labs. In the early 2000s, Bell
Labs was rocked by a scientific scandal so heinous it has its own Wikipedia page. Zhenan’s
colleague and rising star, Jan Hendrik Schön, falsified and straight up made up data in
papers with huge implications for electronics. Zhenan played no part in this breach of scientific
trust and integrity, but she worked directly with Hendrik.
Zhenan: It came as a shock. We sent molecules to Germany for him to do testing. At the time because
of some visa issue. I wasn’t able to see the actual experiments being performed.
Matt: Because Hendrik didn’t keep lab notebooks and because he discarded or destroyed samples,
it’s still unclear how many results he fabricated and how many were legit. Although that still
haunts Zhenan, this notorious impropriety has done nothing to change her attitude toward collaboration.
Zhenan: I think it definitely had an impact on my career, but it’s not going to stop me from
collaboration, because that’s extremely important for the advancement of our science and technology.
Matt: Huge thanks to Zhenan and her team for showing us around their lab. Be sure to tune
into the road trip’s next stop at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, where we’re
going to learn about some tiny little satellites getting ready to do some chemistry in space.
Thanks for watching!