In a photo contest organized by Eurotech Universities Alliance for early-stage researchers entitled 'What does your research look like in times of COVID-19?” Anjali Achazhiyath Edathil won first prize. The winner was selected through voting at the EuroTech online event ‘DESIGNING A RESILIENT EUROPE’ on 10 November 2020.
Anjali A. Edathil, a PhD student from Biomaterial Microsystems (BIOMIC) group headed by Associate Professor Stephan S Keller of DTU Nanolab, submitted the entry entitled 'The Corona Effect on Hydrogels'.
“The entry was from my PhD work 'Fabrication of porous and fractal-like carbon microelectrodes for energy storage' which is part of the Pyrolytic Hierarchical Organic Electrodes for sustaiNable Electrochemical Energy Systems (PHOENEEX)' project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC),” Anjali explains...
In an approach to prepare sustainable high performance supercapacitors, Anjali was working on utilizing hydrogels as a shapeable and versatile platform with the help of additive manufactured molds and converting to hierarchically porous carbon electrode material via pyrolysis.
The photo
Shapeable hydrogels with 3D morphology have shown great technological promise in last decades. Before corona, with the help of additive manufactured master molds, polysaccharide-based hydrogels were successfully fabricated with excellent mechanical strength and shape ability. Surprisingly, after corona lockdown, the fabricated hydrogels showed poor mechanical strength. Although, the problem was because of expired chemicals, we assume that the hydrogels were infected by COVID-19.
Below is the link where you can find more information about the contest.
https://eurotech-universities.eu/join-our-photo-contest-for-early-stage-researchers/
More details of the PhD project can be found in the below link.
https://www.nanolab.dtu.dk/english/Research/PHDs/Anjali-Achazhiyath-Edathil