Providing clean water and safe drug delivery are grand societal challenges. The field of nanotechnology offers ways to address both challenges. However, the manufacture of nanoparticles and, in particular, sub-10 nm particles needed to support these revolutionary solutions is plagued by low yield and long production times. Conventional production of self-assembled nanomaterials is highly time consuming with poor control of structural uniformity due to undesired and uncontrolled inter-particle interactions under particle thermal fluctuation. This grant supports fundamental research to develop a scalable nanomanufacturing process for high-throughput production of nanocolloidal assemblies. The new approach that integrates rapid electrospray and microfluidic processes solves the current bottleneck in slow and low-yield manufacturing of hierarchically structured nanomaterials. The success of this research impacts U.S. manufacturing, economy, and security. This project uniquely integrates multiple disciplines including manufacturing, fluid mechanics, materials science, and device fabrication. The multidisciplinary approach helps recruit and train students, including women and underrepresented minorities, as the next generation of U.S. engineers, thus positively impacting engineering education.
Many manufacturing approaches have utilized external fields, such as electrical and optical fields, to overcome colloidal thermal fluctuations and direct the assembly of colloidal nanoparticles. However, scalable nanomanufacturing processes to rapidly and precisely assemble nanocolloids of 10 nm or smaller size, including noble metal and metal oxide nanoclusters and (bio)polymers, remain few and challenging. This project develops an integrated electrospray and microfluidic manufacturing process to rapidly concentrate inorganic nanoclusters and polymers in droplet nanoreactors and control their hierarchical nanocolloidal assembly by dielectrophoresis. Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is integrated with the continuous microfluidic process to enable in-situ characterization of the compositions and assembly process of building hierarchical nanocolloids in liquid media. Results obtained from this research advance the fundamental understanding of nanoscale electrokinetic behavior of complex nanomaterials. Both electrospray and dielectrophoresis microfluidic modules can be linearly scaled-up to pioneer high-throughput nanomanufacturing of multi-component and structured nanocolloidal assemblies.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
