After publishing a journal article on the carbon nanotubing findings in Physica during his junior year, Ma set his sights on returning to the Undergraduate Exhibition this year, where he won the first place University Libraries Award for Information Literacy and took third place overall in the physical sciences category. He presented a poster detailing ultrahigh-power supercapacitors using flexible and self-assembled carbon nanotube electrodes, which — simplified — can be thought of as powerful, flexible batteries.
Ma explained that the supercapacitors he’s working on with researchers at Penn State aim to harness the higher energy quality of a battery combined with the faster speed of a conductor. That research led to the idea that these supercapacitors could have a different, more functional structure than in the past, which is what Ma’s poster will focus on.
Ma, now in his senior year, helped the team of researchers establish their own “self-assembly techniques” to cut out the less conductive binders that are normally part of superconductors. Initial findings on this research were published in the “Journal of Physical Chemistry” in January.
After establishing those techniques, the team is now working on solid-state supercapactiors, which are lightweight and flexible and don’t require the heavy steel casing that batteries do. The supercapacitors are six-dimensional, meaning they have high power, have sufficient energy, have flexibility, are lightweight, work at a safe temperature and have the capacity for easily increased voltage.
“After we did some research on carbon nanotubes, I transitioned to the University Park campus and got in touch with another professor who was a collaborator with my professor in Altoona,” Ma said. “We’re trying to develop energy storage systems, which could harvest small-input energies like solar power or your heart pulse.”
Ma said that in the long range, the supercapacitors could save money and wasted energy and could have many uses, such as for watches or in devices for soldiers working in rural areas without an energy supply.
He has been working on the new research at University Park with Clive Randall, a materials science and engineering professor and the director of the Center for Dielectric Studies, and Ram Rajagokapalan, a research associate in Materials Research Institute who joined the Department of Engineering at Penn State Dubois this year.
Originally from Shanghai, Ma came to the United States to participate in an exchange program in Atchison, Kan., as a senior in high school. That year, Ma presented a poster in the Kansas State Science Fair and found his calling.
Having lived in a small town and in an environment where he was immersed with English speakers to perfect his own language skills, Ma felt comfortable starting his college experience at Penn State Altoona before moving to the University Park campus. He entered the Schreyer Honors College his junior year through the Gateway admission process.
“I really like the 2+2 program,” Ma said. “I started from a small campus and learned a lot of basics. I really learned a lot of fundamental knowledge for my junior and senior years here.”