Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Commons^™

Elementary Studies Of Twisted Bilayer Graphene, Branden P. Burns, Yong P. Chen

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In the nanotechnology field, some existing materials and applications are harmful to the environment, not efficient for certain tasks, or too expensive to be fully utilized. Graphene is a strong and cheap material that can be used to improve current nanotechnologies for more practical uses in society. Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) is an orientation of graphene layers that exhibit different properties than regular bilayer graphene. It is made by placing a single layer of graphene on top of another at an angle with respect to the other lattice orientation. Understanding the characteristics of TBG is important to uncover more physics …

Thin Electrical Double Layer Simulation Of Micro-Electrochemical Supercapacitors, Kaitlyn Fisher, Guoping Xiong, Timothy S. Fisher

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The deteriorating state of the environment has drawn many people to hybrid electric vehicles. Electrochemical micro-supercapacitors are of interest in this field because of their high power density relative to other micro-power sources. However, little is known about how the properties of the electrolyte used affect the performance of such devices. The first step of this investigation was to use thermoreflectance microscopy to measure the temperature change of the electrodes while charging and discharging supercapacitor samples. The components of these samples were graphitic petal electrodes with a Ti/Au covering (for enhanced light reflectance) on a SiO₂ base, with a …

Prism - Materials Simulation Tool, Ryan Widjaja, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

MEMS (Micro-electromechanical System) is a combined electrical and mechanical nano-scaled device with rapidly growing applications. We have developed a contacting radio frequency capacitive MEMS that is commonly used as capacitive switches and contact actuators in PRISM (Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems) lab at Purdue University. Our research team has focused on creating a simulation of MEMS’s survivability towards crazing and cracking. Our particular objective in this project is to create a tool that can help users perform complex quantitative calculations regarding the properties of different materials. This tool will generate various plots visualizing the properties, such as …

Crystalline Cellulose – Atomistic Modeling Toolkit, Mateo Gomez, Pablo Zavattieri Dr.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Nature has created efficient strategies to make materials with hierarchical internal structure that often exhibit exceptional mechanical properties. One such example is found in cellulose, in fact it is eight times stronger than stainless steel and advantage is that cellulose incredibly cheap, because processing is obtained from purified wood pulp (it is environmental friendly). The most prevalent modeling technique to study the fundamental mechanical behavior of the crystalline cellulose has been Molecular Dynamics (MD). As a predictive tool, MD allows us to study the behavior of crystalline cellulose at the atomic level, and as such, it accurately predicts the crystalline …

Phase-Field Dislocation Dynamics Code Optimization, Jaime A. Perez, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The importance of the study of nanocrystalline materials has gained a huge amount of attention these years due to its extraordinary mechanical, electrical and chemical properties. One significant way to progress in this field is by simulating the behavior of the particles in nano scale, which is not only a need but a challenge due to massive interactions that occur there. The phase-field dislocation dynamics (PFDD) method has been successfully employed in the modeling of plastic deformation, creep and grain boundary sliding. In PFDD, the plastic strain and the energy are functions of phase fields that obey a set of …

Dna Based Carbon Nanotube Porphyrin Nanohybrids Molecular Recognization And Regeneration, Molly M. Riccitelli, Hanyu Zhang, Jong Hyun Choi

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In the search to improve solar cells, scientists are exploring new materials that will provide better current transfer. One material that has emerged as a strong contender is the single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT). Current DNA-SWNT based films combined with chromophores have poor operational lifetimes compared to commercial solar cells. Once exposed to light the chromophore begins to degrade, eventually rendering the solar cell unusable. To solve this problem, we used a method involving multiple steps. First we found which DNA sequences formed structures around the SWNT that could hold the most chromophores by using a spectrophotometer to test the …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Nucleic Acid-Functionalized Nanomaterials, Brianna S. Carroll, Jong Hyun Choi

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Motor proteins such as kinesin move along microtubules in order to transport cellular cargos throughout the cell by obtaining energy from RNA hydrolysis which allows the cell to complete the tasks needed to stay alive. In this work, we developed synthetic molecular motors using DNA enzymes (DNAzyme) and fluorescent nanomaterials which mimic the functions and structures of motor proteins. A DNAzyme-capped CdS nanoparticle and a RNA-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) were used as a walker and a track in the motor platform, respectively. As a walking mechanism, the DNAzyme cleaved the RNA substrates in the presence of metal cations. The …

Synthesizing Bismuth Telluride Nanowires In A Large Scale And Investigating The Energy Filtering Effect By Blending Bismuth Telluride Nanowires And Silver Nanoparticle In Thermoelectrics, Henka Darsono, Haiyu Fang, Yue Wu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

More than 50% of the energy sources becomes “waste” energy generally dissipated to the atmosphere in the form of heat. Thermoelectric effect is a conversion of temperature difference to electric voltage and can be used to convert the wasted heat to useful work. Nanomaterials have great potentials in the field of thermoelectric effect since they have properties that can allow higher efficiency in converting this wasted heat to electricity as compared to bulk materials. The purpose of this project is to develop a method to synthesize bismuth telluride (Bi₂Te₃) nanowires on a large scale and incorporate …

Assessing The Mvs Model For Nanotransistors, Siyang Liu, Xingshu Sun, Mark S. Lundstrom

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

A simple semi-empirical compact MOSFET model has been developed, which is called MIT virtual source (MVS) model. Compare to other model used in industry, MVS model requires only a few parameters, most of which can be directly obtained from experiment, and produce accurate results. One aim of this paper is to test the applicability of the MVS model to transistor made from MoS₂ rather than silicon. Another target is to determine the sustainability of the MVS model under different transistor tests. To achieve these goals, the MVS model will be used to fit the experimental data on MoS_{2 …}

Pulsed Laser Coating Of Bioceramic (Hap) And Niti Nanoparticles On Metallic Implants, Aayush Goswami, Gary J. Cheng

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

This research deals with increasing the biocompatibility of the bio implants which have a global market valued more than $94.1 billion . The surface of the metal alloys used for the bone implants need to be coated with bio compatible materials like HAp(Hydroxyapatite), graphene, etc. in order to promote the growth of cells(osteoblasts) on the surface of the implants. Various techniques like plasma spray coating, ion beam sputter coating, etc. have been used before to coat such materials on a substrate, however these have faced problems of coating quality. In order to perfect this coating, that is make it more …

Real-Time Substrate Transport Control For Stable And Efficient Thin-Film-Based Roll-To-Roll (R2r) Micro-Nanomanufacturing, Wencheng Wang, Guoao Sun, Liang Pan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The commercialization of electronic devices requires the high efficiency and stable mirco-nanomanufacturing processes that allow frequent design upgrades. R2R Nano is a gateway to science and engineering research that aims to impact the widespread adoption of R2R technologies for low-cost, high-volume production of high technology products on flexible substrates. However, there are lots of the mechanical and chemical factors influencing the system performance when fabricating nano-scale structures. Thus, feedback control system is increasingly playing a great role in improving the R2R performance.

The aim of the project is to design a feedback control system for enhancing the performance of the …

Developing A Crystal Viewer Tool For Nanohub, Osiris V. Ntarugera, Gerhard Klimeck

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Most materials found in nature have their atoms arranged in a regular and repeated pattern known as crystalline structure; this is particularly true for metals. It is very important to understand the crystal structure of materials in order to predict their properties such as the electric conductivity, heat transfer, and more. Particularly, students and scholars in the field of material science need a way to visualize the different crystal structures. Atomic structures of elements are not visible to the naked eye. In that context, a computer based tool can be used to simulate and to visualize the crystal structures of …

Microfluidic Platform For Immobilizing Cells To Surfaces, Sze Yung Li, Arvind Raman

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) is an advanced nanotechnology tool for image mapping and cell properties measuring. One of the major challenges presented to the scientists in the field is the procedure for sample preparation. In order for a cell or virus to be measured by the AFM, it has to be firmly attached to the surface. Existing methods including chemical functionalization of surface for cells binding are often very slow process which hinders the possibility of high throughput measurement. Therefore, we propose a new method that utilizes a fluid circulation system to immobilize cells of interest to designated area to …

Mechanical Design Of Real-Time Substrate Transport Control For Stable And Efficient Thin-Film-Based Roll-To-Roll (R2r) Micro-Nanomanufacturing, Guoao Sun, Liang Pan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The commercialization of electronic devices requires the high efficiency and stable mirco-nanomanufacturing processes that allow frequent design upgrades. R2R Nano is a gateway to science and engineering research that aims to impact the widespread adoption of R2R technologies for low-cost, high-volume production of high technology products on flexible substrates. However, there are lots of the mechanical and chemical factors influencing the system performance when fabricating nano-scale structures. Thus, feedback control system is increasingly playing a great role in improving the R2R performance.

The aim of my work of the project is more related to design mechanical section of the whole …