Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems represent nearly half of building energy usage in the United States. Recent building regulations requiring increased air turnover within buildings will result in even greater air conditioning usage. To alleviate these concerns, membrane-based heat-and-moisture exchangers known as energy recovery ventilators have been developed to...
The need for less toxic quantum dots (QDs) has led to a significant number of investigations related to copper indium sulfide (CIS) QDs. Lower toxicity and broad band absorbance width makes CIS QDs appealing for light emitting diodes (LEDs), lasers, sensors, bio-imaging, solar cells, and computing. The optical and electronic...
Boiling heat transfer is studied for its ability to dissipate high fluxes and achieve heat transfer coefficients two orders of magnitude greater than single-phase heat transfer systems. Heater surface enhancement with increased surface area, varied geometry, wettability contrast and micro/nano-structures can further enhance boiling heat transfer performance through bubble nucleation...
Marine biofouling is a major problem in many industries. Shipping has been afflicted with reduced vessel speed and hindered maneuverability due to organisms attaching since the dawn of sailing. To date, the primary method developed to prevent fouling is the application of biocide laden coatings with various release mechanisms. Mass...
Polymer samples of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and a PTFE-glass weave (RF- 35P) are exposed to low pressure, non-equilibrium glow discharge plasmas for enhanced wettability as measured by static contact angles. Plasma treatments are performed in two parallel plate RF plasma systems, a downstream microwave plasma and a barrel etcher using feed...
Micro Energy and Chemical Systems (MIECS) are multi-scale microsystems, which rely
on embedded nano and micro-scale features to process bulk amounts of fluid in
applications ranging from man-portable heat pumps, distributed fuel reforming and insitu
waste remediation. Microlamination is a well-known process architecture for
fabricating the highly parallel, high aspect...
As the drive continues to reduce the size of Printed Wiring Assemblies (PWAs),
improve performance of electronic assemblies, and reduce costs of these products,
reliable secondary (bottom) side reflow operations must be developed. Attaching Surface
Mount Technology (SMT) components to the secondary side of a Printed Circuit Board
(PCB) is...
The thermal contact conductance (TCC) between two machined pieces of stainless steel was studied. A guarded hot plate thermal conductivity test fixture was designed and built for the experiment. Factors investigated included the contact pressure, surface roughness, interface material and average test temperature. The contact pressure at the interface ranged...
Interactions between proteins and contact surfaces can have
important implications in the food industry. Such interactions
contribute to the course of fouling of membrane surfaces and they
appear to mediate bacterial and spore adhesion to some degree as
well. In addition to protein and solution properties, interfacial
behavior is strongly...
The ion implantation process is a very precise, controllable, and
reproducible method used to enhance material properties of finished
components such as ball bearings. Essentially, the target material is
bombarded by accelerated ions to form a thin alloyed layer in the
substrate. As the ions deposit their kinetic energy in...