Engineering Commons^™

Engineering Hyaluronic Acid Carbon Nanotube Nanofibers: A Peripheral Nerve Interface To Electrically Stimulate Regeneration, Elisabeth M. Steel

Wayne State University Dissertations

Peripheral nerve injuries annually affect hundreds of thousands of people globally. Current treatments like the gold standard autograft and commercially available nerve guide conduits (NGC) are insufficient to repair long gap peripheral nerve injuries. NGCs can aid recovery but lack key microenvironment cues that promote nerve regeneration. We hypothesized that providing topographical, mechanical, and electrical guidance cues through a nanofibrous composite biopolymer would result in improved neuron growth metrics using an in vitro model. We embedded hydrophilic carbon nanotubes (CNT) within hyaluronic acid (HA) nanofibers by electrospinning. The aims of this study were (1) to define the topographical, nanomechanical, and …

Heat, Charge And Spin Transport Of Thin Film Nanostructures, Devin John Wesenberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding of fundamental physics of transport properties in thin film nanostructures is crucial for application in spintronic, spin caloritronics and thermoelectric applications. Much of the difficulty in the understanding stems from the measurement itself. In this dissertation I present our thermal isolation platform that is primarily used for detection of thermally induced effects in a wide variety of materials. We can accurately and precisely produce in-plane thermal gradients in these membranes, allowing for thin film measurements on 2-D structures. First, we look at thermoelectric enhancements of doped semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube thin films. We use the Wiedemann-Franz law to calculate …

Mixed Matrix Flat Sheet And Hollow Fiber Membranes For Gas Separation Applications, Nicholas W. Linck

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

Mixed matrix membranes (MMM) offer one potential path toward exceeding the Robeson upper bound of selectivity versus permeability for gas separation performance while maintaining the benefits of solution processing. Many inorganic materials, such as zeolites, metal-organic frameworks, or carbon nanotubes, can function as molecular sieves, but as stand-alone membranes are brittle and difficult to manufacture. Incorporating them into a more robust polymeric membrane matrix has the potential to mitigate this issue.

In this work, phase inversion polymer solution processing for the fabrication and testing of asymmetric flat sheet mixed matrix membranes was employed with CVD-derived multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) dispersed …