Development of Smart Nano-textured Materials for Fluid Mechanical and Heat and Mass Transfer Systems

Smart nano-texture materials and their applications to engineering problems (e.g. flows in microchannels, drug delivery, cooling of hot surfaces in microelectronics) attract growing attention of the research community and are in the focus of the present work. In particular, in this work by using radical copolymerization, stimuli-responsive copolymers with an enhanced longevity in aqueous surroundings were successfully prepared. Non-woven, nanotextured smart materials of these novel copoloymers are of interest for such applications as micro- and nanofluidics, disposable wipers, drug carriers, and tissue engineering. In addition, the stimuli-responsive copolymer was grafted at the inner walls of glass microcapillaries, and thermo-responsive, on-demand regulation of water flow rate in such microcapillaries was studied. The second part of the work is devoted to drop impact onto electrospun nanofiber mats as a way for enhanced heat removal in spray cooling. In the context of spray cooling, macroscopically long copper, nickel, silver and gold nanofiber mats and nanotubes were produced as the additional means of heat transfer enhancement. The third part of the work is devoted to development of electrospun and solution blown three-dimensional carbon fiber nonwovens and their application as electrodes in microbial fuel cells and Li-ions batteries. The electrospun three-dimensional carbon fiber nonwovens could also be decorated with poly(furfuryl alcohol)-derived carbon nanoparticles and tetraethylorthosilicate-derived silica nanoparticles. Also, this work extended to the development of solution blown soy protein nanofibers and their application as an antibacterial material.