Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

The primary focus of the seminar is in the area of synthesis, processing, properties and applications of nanostructured materials. The three categories of nanostructured materials that form the core of our research group are based on particles, patterned arrays, and porous films. In the area of particles, sintered structures of ceramic and metal nanoparticles and nanocomposites of metal and polymer nanoparticles have been studied extensively by our group. Patterned arrays of metallic structures embedded in rigid or flexible dielectric matrix constitute a recent class of systems that have been investigated by our group. The porous films that have been developed by our group include sintered structures, anodized membranes with chemically modified surfaces, and permeable polymer nanocomposites. The fabrication processes of core interest for manipulating the above nanomaterials include powder injection molding, laser machining, ebeam lithography, anodization, sintering and surface modification. From an application standpoint, the material attributes that have been examined by our group include mechanical, electrical, thermal, biological and optical properties. The combination of materials and processes have been extended to a broad range of application areas including electronic packaging, chemical and biological sensors, metamaterials, energy harvesting, armor, biomaterials, nanofluidics and microsystems. The outlook of our research group is to develop an understanding of the structure-processing-property inter-relationships in these systems to enable the development of new applications.