Speakers

Biography

Dr.N.Gokarneshan was born in 1964. He obtained his Ph.D. in textile technology from Anna University, Chennai, India 2008. He has academic experience spanning over 25 years and industrial experience spanning over 10 years. He has worked in a number of premier academic institutions and held various positions such as professor, head of department, dean, and principal. He works as a Professor and head at the Department of Fashion Design and Arts at the Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai, India. He has made many contributions in his field. He has authored 15 books, published over 200 papers in various leading journals, contributed many book chapters, and presented papers at conferences. His recognitions include editorial board membership and peer review in journals. Besides, he has also been an organizing committee member at a number of meetings. He is a recipient of a number of awards and recognitions for his outstanding contributions to the field. He has organized many seminars, workshops, and symposiums. He has been a resource person in a number of technical webinars. He has been a resource person for faculty development programs. He has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in various academic institutions. His noteworthy contributions include paper publications in top-grade SCI, SCOPUS, and WEB OF SCIENCE journals, books, and book chapters with prestigious publishers like WILEY, ELSEVIER, SPRINGER NATURE, SAGE, TAYLOR, AND FRANCIS.

Abstract

This article overviews manufacturing composite carbon nanofiber-based aerogels through freeze-casting technology. As known, freeze casting is a relatively new manufacturing technique for generating highly porous structures. During the process, deep cooling is used first to solidify a well-dispersed slurry rapidly. Then, vacuum drying is conducted to sublimate the solvent. This allows the creation of highly porous materials. Although the freeze-casting technique was initially developed for porous ceramics processing, it has found various applications, especially for making aerogels. Aerogels are highly porous materials with extremely high volumes of free spaces, which contributes to the characteristics of high porosity, ultralight, large specific surface area, huge interface area, and, in addition, super low thermal conductivity. Carbon nanofiber aerogels have recently been studied to achieve exceptional properties of high stiffness, flame-retardant, and thermal-insulating. The freeze-casting technology has been reported for preparing carbon nanofiber composite aerogels for energy storage, conversion, water purification, catalysis, fire prevention, etc. This review deals with freeze-casting carbon nanofiber composite materials consisting of functional nanoparticles with exceptional properties. The content of this review article is organized as follows. The first part will introduce the general freeze-casting manufacturing technology of aerogels, emphasizing how to use the technology to make nanoparticle-containing composite carbon nanofiber aerogels. Then, modeling and characterization of the freeze-cast particle-containing carbon nanofibers will be presented, emphasizing modeling the thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity of the carbon nanofiber network aerogels. After that, the applications of the carbon nanofiber aerogels will be described. Examples of energy converters, supercapacitors, secondary battery electrodes, dye absorbents, sensors, and catalysts from composite carbon nanofiber aerogels will be shown. Finally, the perspectives on future work will be presented.