Engineering Commons^™

Polymer-Based Thermoelectric Devices, Stuart W. Hilsmier, Edward P. Tomlinson, Bryan Boudouris

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Currently, over 50% of all energy generated in the US is lost as waste heat, and thermoelectric generators offer a promising means to recoup some of this energy, if their efficiency is improved. While organic thermoelectric materials lack the efficiency of their inorganic counterparts, they are composed of highly abundant resources and have low temperature processing conditions. Recently, a new class of redox-active polymers, radical polymers, has exhibited high electrical conductivity in an entirely amorphous medium. In addition, these radical polymers have a simple synthetic scheme and can be highly tunable to provide desired electrical properties. In this study, the …

Chronological And Pedagogical Analysis Of Global Real-Time Assessment Tool For Teaching Enhancement (G-Rate), Syafiah Mahfuzah Johari, Monica Cox, Nikitha Sambamurthy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Global Real-Time Assessment Tool for Teaching Enhancement (G-RATE) serves as a pedagogical feedback tool to assess teaching performance in learning environments. This tool is developed based on How People Learn (HPL) framework, which specifically identifies four dimensions which are essential elements of an effective learning environment which are community-centeredness, learner-centeredness, assessment-centeredness and knowledge-centeredness. However, there are no succinct and meaningful representations for frequency and chronological observational data and no interpretation has been made from the collected observation data so far. This study addresses two different methods to observe the patterns from the observation data. First, observation data is compared …

Spatiotemporal Changes In Nuclear Strain Measured By Traction Force Microscopy, Ryan D. Watts, Corey Neu, Jonathan Henderson

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The knowledge of how cells interact with and sense their surroundings is missing the key components of time dependency and how substrate stiffness affects amount and rate of strain. This new knowledge of cell-substrate interaction can be applied further to research regarding chromatin spatiotemporal dynamics to better understand gene accessibility for transcription. Studying how the cell functions on a deeper level will provide understanding of cellular morphological changes and proliferation. This study uses the methods of optical microscopy and traction force microscopy (TFM) to image substrate deformation as well as analyze its strain profile to find where forces are interacting …

Thin-Film Sol-Gel As Controlled Delivery Platform For Neural Microelectrodes, Margaret A. Harden, Matthew D. Mcdermott, Kevin J. Otto

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Long-term efficacy of neural implantation devices is a persisting challenge in neural engineering and rehabilitation. Upon implantation of a neural device, the foreign body response (FBR) is triggered and glial cells form a sheath around the electrode array. This sheath isolates the array from the rest of the brain both mechanically and electrically. Tetramethyl orthosilicate (TMOS), a thin-film polymer, has been shown to not negatively impact the impedance and charge-carrying capacity, as well as offer a controlled delivery method to deliver pharmaceuticals to mitigate inflammation without significant effect to device design. Using an in vitro protein delivery model to analyze …

Finite Element Analysis Of Bolted Connections Under Fire, Ke Liu, Qiaqia Zhu, Amit H. Varma

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Over the course of human history, fire disasters are one of the major catastrophes that causes loss of lives and properties. In order to ensure building safety against fire, civil engineers seek to understand the behavior of structures at high temperatures. Moreover, they need to study the behavior of bolted connections, given the important role it plays in steel structures. Sarraj (2007) proposed a plate-bearing computational model used to describe this behavior; however, it has never been experimentally verified. Prior to this specific project, a series of single-bolted connection tests at 400°C and 600°C were conducted in the Bowen Laboratory …

A Wind-Derived Upwelling Index For Lake Michigan, Stephen B. Davis, Rebecca Essig, Cary Troy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Coastal upwelling is a phenomenon that occurs along coastlines throughout the world, and has been shown to be strongly correlated with large fish populations in these areas. Coastal upwelling occurs when strong coastal winds drive water transport away from the coast, causing colder, often nutrient-rich water to upwell in its place. While coastal upwellings can be detected with satellite imagery or in situ temperature measurements, these datasets are neither continuous nor long-term. A wind-derived upwelling index was created for Lake Michigan to continuously quantify upwellings over multiple decades, and to allow for further understanding of the impact of upwelling in …

1d Phonon Bte Solver (Small Scale Heat Transport Simulation), Joseph A. Sudibyo, Amr Mohammed, Ali Shakouri

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In current technology, electronic devices shrink to the size of nanometers. The ability to accurately model heat transport to understand the thermal behavior of these small electronic devices becomes increasingly important. Since heat transport is very difficult to measure directly in small electronic devices, simulation becomes an effective means to model heat transport. A user-interactive simulation tool is created to model heat transport in small electronic devices of different lengths. Heat transport is modeled by solving one-dimensional Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) to obtain the transient temperature profile of a multi-length and multi-timescale thin film under constant temperature boundary condition or …

Development Of A Nanomanufacturing Process To Produce Atomically Thin Black Phosphorus, Andrew Stephens, Zhe Luo, Xianfan Xu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Atomically thin black phosphorus (phosphorene) has both unique and desirable properties that differ from bulk black phosphorus. Unlike graphene, phosphorene has a bandgap, which makes it potentially useful for applications in the next generation of transistors. Large-scale applications of phosphorene, like other 2D materials, are limited by current production methods. The most common method of making phosphorene is mechanical exfoliation, which can only produce small and irregular quantities. In this work we investigate a top-down method of producing phosphorene by using a scanning ultrafast laser to thin black phosphorus flakes. Because the bandgap of phosphorene increases as layers are removed, …

Design Of A Small Scale Roll To Roll Device, Amon A. Pereira, Edward White, Rebecca Krone Kramer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In the soft robotics field, hyperelastic polymer films are used in conjunction with eutectic gallium indium to create flexible strain gages. However, rapid large scale manufacturing methods of such sensors have yet to be developed.

Developing new manufacturing methods will allow for researchers to build and test new soft sensor concepts faster but also pave the way for future mass-production of these sensors for consumer or industrial consumption.

One of those methods would be a Roll to Roll System (R2R) similar to those used to in the publication industry. In this context, Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film rolls will be used …

Molecular Exploration Tool, Weiyi Cao, Nicolas Onofrio, Alejandro Strachan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Density Functional Theory (DFT) which is based on quantum mechanics theory has been broadly used to compute the energy and the structure of molecules and solids. However, the DFT method is limited when running calculations for a large system and only thousands of atoms can be solved. Alternatively, Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation can be used to investigate the properties of the atomic system for large systems in the classical mechanics approximation. When running the MD simulation, the electronic structure is approximated by Force Fields (FF) which can be parametrized against DFT calculations. Nevertheless, the accuracy of the MD results and …

The Kinetics Of A Palladium Precursor – Tobacco Mosaic Virus Reaction, Adi Banerjee, Mayo Adigun, Michael T. Harris

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There have been numerous developments in the field of production of metallic nanoparticles using biotemplates such as the Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). Past research has looked at the conditions required to maximise nanoparticle formation. This study of the kinetics of a nanomaterial synthesis reaction using a biotemplate would elucidate the understanding of the controlled growth of nanoparticles, which can be applied in the fabrication of photocatalysts, electrical nanocircuits and solar cells. This study specifically focuses on the reaction between a palladium precursor and the TMV without an external reducing agent, where the palladium ion concentration is measured over time using …

Simulation Of Plasmonic Waveguides Based On Long-Range Surface Plasmon Polaritons, Yugang Jing, Alexandra Boltasseva, Nathaniel Kinsey

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The demand for faster and smaller computing devices is growing larger and larger. In the recent decade, research has proven that plasmonic devices have exciting characteristics and performance for next generation on‑chip structures. However, most of these devices contain noble metals and are not CMOS compatible. This work numerically investigates the performance of plasmonic waveguide designs made of TiN, a CMOS compatible material with optical properties similar to gold. Through our work, we demonstrate that TiN nanophotonic devices can be useful for inter-chip connections. A series of simulations using COMSOL Multiphysics were performed to test the performance of these structures. …

Noise Source Analysis For Simulated Turbulent Jets, Robert W. Skidmore, Nitin S Dhamankar, Kurt M. Aikens, Gregory Blaisdell

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is an efficient computational approach to study turbulent flows and has seen increasing application to the study of jet noise. The main challenge of LES has been the realistic simulation of experiments at reasonable cost. Recent LES studies have been realistic enough to gain important insight into jet noise from the large amount of data generated. This study attempts to characterize the sources of noise from a turbulent jet via analysis of the LES results. Three different analysis tools are implemented. The first two are comparable to analyses used on experimental data: two-point cross-correlations between far-field …

Stability Of Aqueous Dispersions Of Titanium Dioxide Against Sedimentation And Aggregation, Guanrong Bai, Xilan Zhu, Elias I. Franses, David S. Corti, Yung-Jih Yang

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Particles of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) are widely used as white pigments in paints and inks, due to their brightness and high refractive index. Yet, with TiO₂ having a high density (4.2 g/cm³), particles with typical sizes of 300 nm sediment rapidly even before significant agglomeration can occur. Thus, increasing the stability of TiO2 dispersions against sedimentation as well as aggregation is important. We studied the effect of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), a commonly used dispersant, on the stability of aqueous dispersions of TiO₂ with weight fractions from 0.01 to 40. The sedimentation time of …

Bio-Inspired Helicoidal Composites: 3d Printing And Experiments, Michael E. Jones, Pablo Zavattieri, Nobphadon Suksangpanya

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Materials that are impact resistant enough for personal protection in sports, transport, and combat are not also lightweight, strong, tough, and impact tolerant. Nature can provide inspiration for novel materials that can meet these needs. The hierarchical composite of the stomatopod’s, or mantis shrimp’s, dactyl club has been shown to have high impact resistance and damage tolerance due to its helicoidal fiber reinforcement(1,2). Analyzing helicoidal composites of different pitch angles (angles between adjacent rows of fibers) under quasi-static, displacement-controlled loading has provided insights into the fracture mechanisms of the composite structure and how they affect the macroscopic properties of the …

Thermoelectric (Te) Device Made Using Pbte Nanocrystal Coated Glass Fibers, Xiaoqin Zhu, Scott W. Finefrock, Yue Wu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Around 60 % of the energy produced in the U.S. in 2013 was wasted and most of this was dissipated in the form of heat. Thermoelectric materials could potentially harvest part of the energy being wasted by converting heat energy into electrical energy. Lead telluride nanocrystals are an interesting thermoelectric material particularly for solution-based coating of flexible substrates. The purpose of this project is to develop a working thermoelectric device using p-n pairs of PbTe nanocrystal coated glass fibers. In this project, p- and n- type PbTe nanocrystals are synthesized in solution. Bare glass fibers are sequentially dipped in solutions …

Investigating Attitudes Toward Diversity Among Engineering And Management Students, Xiuli Wang, Brent K. Jesiek, Qin Zhu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

As the world becomes increasingly globalized, students and professionals face growing challenges related to working across national and cultural boundaries. A related concern for today’s educators and researchers is a lack of effective assessment tools to measure global competency among students in engineering, management, and other professional fields. To begin addressing this gap, two previously validated measures of personal attitudes and perceptions toward diversity were administered to students in multiple professional fields, as it was hypothesized that a positive attitude toward diversity is likely one of the major qualities that makes engineers and other professionals perform more sensitively and effectively …

Tissue Engineering: Applications In Developmental Toxicology, Stephanie N. Thiede, Nimisha Bajaj, Kevin Buno, Sherry L. Voytik-Harbin

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In vivo toxicology assays are expensive, low-throughput, and often not predictive of a human response. Three-dimensional in vitro human cell-based tissue systems incorporating cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions have promise to provide high-throughput, physiologically-relevant information on the mechanism of the toxin and a more accurate assessment of the toxicity of a chemical before progression to human trials. Quantification of the disruption of vasculogenesis, the de novo formation of blood vessels from endothelial progenitor cells, can serve as an appropriate indicator of developmental toxicity since vasculogenesis is critical to the early development of the circulatory system. The current routinely used in vitro …

Formulation And Solution Of Contingency Constrained Acopf Problem With Pyomo, Stefanus D. Winarto, Jianfeng Liu, Carl D. Laird

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Power grids scattered around the world bring great importance to society as they are challenged to provide economically efficient and reliable power market. With consideration of possible system contingency, which refers to multi-scenario optimization where each scenario considers an individual transmission element failure, the determination of optimal generators’ set points in the transmission network is becoming even more essential and challenging. A problem formulation is developed to solve the optimal allocation and minimize the total operating cost for the nominal case while including a large number of contingency scenarios. To achieve that goal, traditional ACOPF (AC optimal power flow model) …

Development Of Electron Microscopy Analysis And Simulation Tools For Nanohub, Mingxuan Lu, Chang Wan Han, Benjamin P. Haley, Volkan Ortalan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Electron microscopy has a crucial role in the field of materials science and structural biology. Although electron microscopy gives lots of important results and findings, some additional simulations and image processing/reconstruction is required to get more information from the data that are collected from the experiments. For this purpose, researchers are using IMOD¹ and QSTEM² for electron microscopy analysis and simulation. IMOD is a set of programs used for tomographic reconstruction and 3D visualization and QSTEM is used for quantitative simulations of TEM and STEM images. However, IMOD and QSTEM are hard to install or use for beginners …

Multi-Channel Analysis For Gradient Artifact Removal From Concurrent Eeg-Fmri Studies, Miguel R. Castellanos, Zhongming Liu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings are susceptible to large amounts of noise due to the static and dynamic magnetic fields present inside the MR scanner. EEG-fMRI studies are conducted to provide better spatial and temporal resolution for each recording, respectively, but the artifacts found in the EEG render the data impossible to interpret. Past studies have focused on signal post-processing techniques which are able to effectively remove noise upon the completion of a study, but there are no techniques able to process the data in real-time without extensive calibration. This research addresses this issue by …

Medical Applications Of Mrc, Kyle Thackston, Henry Mei, Pedro Irazoqui

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Consistent powering is a limiting reagent for many medical implants and sensors. Powering in-vivo devices in animal studies requires either transcutaneous wiring (limiting mobility and increasing the chance of infection) or an implanted battery (limited lifetime and limits size of device). Wireless power transfer (WPT) would be able to overcome these challenges and permit the use of more advanced implantable devices in a research setting. Magnetic resonance coupling (MRC), an advanced form of inductive charging, allows good transfer efficiencies over significant air gaps, but works best a specific location and frequency, limiting mobility in animal studies. Using band-pass filter theory, …

Energy Deposition In A Graphene Field Effect Transistor Based Radiation Detector, Nickolas Upole, Robert Bean, Allen Garner

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The development of high-performance radiation detectors is essential for commercial, scientific, and security applications [1]. Due to the unique electronic properties of graphene (high-speed, low-noise), recent radiation detectors utilize graphene field effect transistors to sense charge carriers produced by radiation interactions in a gated semiconductor [2]. A study of the energy deposition due to the transport of gamma rays and electrons/positrons through typical elemental and compound semiconductors (Si, Ge, GaAs, and CdTe) will allow for a material optimization of these detectors. Geant4, a Monte Carlo based program that simulates the passage of particles through matter, was used to simulate Compton …

Micro-Mechanics Simulation Tool Optimization, Ruixuan Ren, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Crystalline films grown epitaxially on substrates consisting of a different crystalline material are of considerable interest in optoelectronic devices and the semiconductor industry. One way to progress in this field is to develop simulation tools based on specially designed numerical method. A nanoHUB simulation tool was developed based on the phase field theory, which considers the propagation of dislocations inside the crystalline film. However, the current tool needs several improvements to be more realistic and user-friendly. First, the inputs of the simulation tool are adjusted so that the user can use this tool directly without any additional calculation. The output …

He+ Ion Irradiation On Tungsten Surface In Extreme Conditions, George I. Joseph, Jitendra Tripathi, Sivanandan S. Harilal, Ahmed Hassanein

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Higher melting point (3695K), lower sputtering yield and most importantly, lower in-bulk, and co-deposit retention at elevated temperature makes tungsten (W) as a potential candidate for plasma-facing component (PFC) in the international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER)-divertor. Helium ion (He⁺) bombardment on W can cause wide variety of microstructural evolution, such as dislocation loops, helium holes/bubbles and fibre-form nanostructures (Fuzz) etc. In this work, 100 eV He⁺ ion irradiation, at temperature ranges from 500°C to 1000°C, will be performed on mechanically polished mirror like W surfaces. The surface modification and compositional analysis, due to ion irradiation, will be …

Functionalization And Length Fractionation Of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes, Nina A. Bragg, Jing Pan, Jong Hyun Choi

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are a promising material for future biological applications such as imaging and targeted drug delivery. SWCNTs can be made soluble in water through surface functionalization, a priority for their use in biology. By studying the surface chemistry of SWCNTs, various functionalization methods can be accomplished without perturbing their electronic structure. This study probes the use of pyrene derivatives and phospholipids to non-covalently functionalize SWCNTs, maintaining useful surface properties. Phospholipids cross-linked to polyethylene glycol (PEG) or 1-pyrenebutyric acid conjugated to DNA is anchored onto the sidewalls of SWCNTs by hydrophobic interactions or π-stacking. The PEG/DNA portion is …

Development Of Integration Software For Multiple Inkjet Functionalization Systems, Jieyu Lu, J. William Boley, George T.-C. Chiu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Inkjet printing is widely used in functional product manufacturing. Performing a printing task requires communication and synchronization among multiple subsystems (e.g. motion and drop ejection), which introduces complexity in the overall printing system. A user interface has been developed, which enables users to input printing parameters and patterns for printing functional materials. The interface then sends commands to the controllers that execute the printing process. The software can also be expanded to carry out standard experiments for functional printing research and characterization. Moreover, the software is transferable to multiple systems. One application explored using the software is drug anti- counterfeiting …

Microstructure Development Of Granular System During Compaction, Chen Shang, Marcial Gonzalez

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Granular materials is the second most manipulated material in the industry today. They are easy to transport and more and more newly developed materials cannot stand the process of traditional casting, like energetic materials and bio-materials, but will survive the powder compaction process. Having a better understanding of the microstructure development of granular systems during compaction process, especially for particles that will heavily deform under loading, will give an insight of how to better process the powders to produce materials with overall better performance comparing to bulk materials. The main theory and mechanism applied are Hertz law and nonlocal contact …

Three Dimensional Quantification Of Angiotensin Ii-Induced Murine Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms Using High Frequency Ultrasound, Amelia R. Adelsperger, Alexa A. Yrineo, Hilary D. Schroeder, Ashley Nicole Blaize, Katherine E. Wilson, Evan H. Phillips, Frederick W. Damen, Craig J. Goergen

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs), a localized dilation of the vessel wall of 50% or more above normal, claims approximately 14,000 U.S. lives yearly due to aortic rupture. This commonly asymptomatic disease can only be treated by endovascular stent grafts or invasive surgery, usually after the AAA diameter reaches 5 cm. Because these treatment methods carry serious risk, stem cell therapy is being explored in order to provide a low risk option for managing smaller AAAs. To determine if stem cell therapy, once administered, could stabilize or reduce AAA growth, baseline 3D ultrasound measurements in a control group were first needed. …

The Catalysis Of Delayed Petroleum Coking, Anya M. Heinimann, Robert Khakimov, Hyun-Tae Hwang, Enrico N. Martinez

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Due to the decreasing crude oil quality (heavier crudes and increasing contaminant concentrations) methods for upgrading residues from the refining process, such as coking, are becoming increasingly important. Delayed coking, a method by which residues are thermally cracked (large heavy molecules broken into smaller lighter molecules), produces liquid products and solid coke which can both be sold for further profit. In order to increase the amount of liquid products produced since they are the most value added product of the coking process catalysts (platinum on 0.5% alumina and nickel (skeletal),molybdenum promoted (1 wt%)) were tested to see how they would …