UCLA

With the rising demands in energy and water, it becomes especially important to investigate alternate paths to source these valuable resources which sustain modern human life. The current water and energy production ecosystems are coupled via the water-energy nexus, operated by a robust system of electric steam turbines and reverse osmosis seawater desalination plants. Unfortunately, the interconversion process between these resources is plagued by low efficiencies, necessitating the desire to decouple the two resource streams. Advanced tailorable porous polymers present a possible technological platform to source more reliable and energy-efficient supplies of electricity and water. Unfortunately, they are currently limited by the intrinsic material challenges of mechanical-diffusive property trade-offs and reduced optical energy harvesting efficiency at oblique illumination. To combat these material challenges, cononsolvency and artificial phototropism are investigated and leveraged to create devices that break conventional property limits.

In Chapter 1, the fundamentals of pore structure engineering are discussed, alongside the limits present in current material systems. In Chapter 2, cononsolvency is investigated as a method to control polymer morphology and decouple the diffusive properties from the mechanical strength of materials. In Chapter 3, insights from fundamental cononsolvency studies are applied to generate tough chemistry-impartial gel polymer electrolytes that can outperform commercial battery separators. In Chapter 4, the same pore structure engineering techniques are implemented towards building soft robots with complex spatiotemporal programmable motion. In Chapter 5, utilizing a temperature-responsive polymer hydrogel, a system is designed exhibiting artificial phototropism for maximizing the harvesting of incoming optical energy.