The design of multifunctional carbon materials from sustainable sources and facile processing is central to advancing environmentally responsible technologies in energy, electronics, and waste remediation. This work presents a class of hierarchically porous graphitic aerogels (HGAs) synthesized from protein precursors via a template-free, self-foaming pyrolysis strategy. Proteins such as bovine serum albumin, milk proteins, whey and hemoglobin, and albumens serve as effective carbon sources, undergoing in situ foaming during thermal decomposition to form monolithic, porous, and partially graphitic architectures.
Controlled pyrolysis leads to aerogels exhibiting tunable porosity, mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. These materials demonstrate strong performance across multiple application domains. In electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, HGAs provide high shielding effectiveness driven by their interconnected conductive network and structural heterogeneity, which promote reflection and absorption of incident waves. In photothermal plastic depolymerization, their broadband light absorption and thermal conversion enable the efficient breakdown of polymeric waste under illumination, offering a route for sustainable plastic recycling. As anodes in microbial electrolysis cells (MECs), HGA-based anode supports high current generation and biofilm formation, benefiting from high surface area and biocompatible graphitic surface, providing a simultaneous solution for ammonium oxidation and PFAS degradation. To further enhance mechanical compliance, flexible composite materials have been developed by infiltrating HGAs with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The ongoing work is investigating the electrical and mechanical properties of these composites aiming to achieve flexibility, stretchability, and structural resilience under strain, enabling their potential use in soft electronic and wearable systems.
This work establishes structure-function relationships that link protein thermal processing, and hierarchical morphology to specific application performance. As a platform technology, protein-derived HGAs demonstrate how bio-sourced materials can be converted into high-performance carbon systems without the need for templates or toxic reagents.
My future research will focus on the strategic design and functionalization of advanced materials such as carbon nanomaterials and aerogels, using targeted doping, surface functionalization, and scalable fabrication methods. By leveraging techniques such as additive manufacturing and self-assembly, and collaborating with computational modeling experts, I aim to optimize structural and functional properties from the nanoscale to the macroscale. These combined approaches will enable the integration of next-generation materials in a wide range of applications, including energy storage, water remediation, electromagnetic shielding, biomedical devices, and multifunctional sensing technologies. Ultimately, these multidisciplinary efforts will generate impactful, sustainable solutions to pressing global challenges, driving materials science toward transformative real-world applications.