| Abstract: | Carbon nanomaterials show remarkable heating rates in response to applied radio frequency (RF) fields, enabling non-contact, rapid, site, and frequency selective heating. In this dissertation, the RF heating behavior of nanomaterials and conductive polymers was studied and applied in the field of actuators, reusable personal protective equipment (PPE) and self-healing. RF heating is beneficial to 1) trigger thermal actuation without a direct connection to a power source and 2) exhibit site-specific actuation without having drawbacks (ex. limited movement and complexity in design for selective actuation). Non-contact, site-specific thermal actuation by using RF heating has been demonstrated, and by simply manipulating the field frequency, site-specific actuation in two different locations was achieved. The RF heating for actuation was achieved not only on carbon nanomaterials but also on a novel type of RF susceptor, PEDOT:PSS, and the effect of physical structure on RF heating was studied. Successful bacterial and viral inactivation through remote and rapid RF heating of conductive textiles was also demonstrated, which is beneficial for the safe and fast sterilization of reusable PPE. The textile's RF heating response after multiple detergent washes showed fabrics' robustness and repeatability of RF heating response. Rapid reduction (<10min) of bacteria and virus was achieved by RF heating our conductive fabric. Finally, the non-contact and targeted characteristics of RF heating were used to demonstrate the healing and reversible adhesion, which enables the healing in the complex structure like embedded conditions. The optical microscope image and tensile test results show that the targeted healing is successful. The reversible adhesion was performed using RF heating for both bonding and debonding. RF debonding occurred in a short time (<20s) and almost instantly after the DAP reaches the target temperature. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/198518 |
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