Antagonistic Nanoengineered Organic Frameworks for Flexible Electrochemistry
by Dr., Manmatha Mahato
Flexible electrochemical technologies–bendable batteries, wearable sensors, and soft robots–demand a rare combination: fast electronic transport for efficiency and ion-driven chemistry for energy storage, catalysis, and actuation. Most materials force a trade-off. Conductive Networks such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and MXenes shuttle electrons rapidly but often offer limited redox-active chemistry. Many metal oxides provide high ionic charge storage and rich redox reactions, yet their poor conductivity constrains performance, especially in thin, flexible devices. This seminar presents a strategy to break this bottleneck using nano-engineered metal–organicframeworks and covalent–organic frameworks–crystalline, porous molecular scaffolds programmable at the building-block level. By tuning pore architecture, redox-active sites, and charge-transport pathways, we create frameworks where electrons and ions operate synergistically rather than competitively. The result is a versatile platform for high-density energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors), electrocatalysis, and electrochemical transduction in soft systems. We conclude with a real-world demonstration: near‑zero‑voltageartificial muscles–flexible actuators capable of lifting ~34× their own weight–
