Event
AE Seminar: Rocks in a plasma stream: Simulations of wake formation at the Moon & small bodies
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
10:00 a.m.
Aerospace Engineering Conference Room, 3164 Martin Hall
Christine Hartzell
hartzell@umd.edu
http://www.aero.umd.edu/events/seminars
Department of Aerospace Engineering Minta Martin Seminar Series
Rocks in a plasma stream: Simulations of wake formation at the Moon and small bodies
Speaker: Michael I. Zimmerman
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
Abstract:
In this presentation, the synergy of nanotechnology and engineering is applied into micro/nanoscale thermal-fluids, nano-bio-chemical sensing, and energy conversion such as solar energy harvesting and enhanced energy transfer device development. Firstly, a label-free visualization technique is implemented for a real-time and full-field mapping of transport and optical properties using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique, which is one of the emerging nanotechnologies. The key idea for a label-free visualization with SPR imaging is that the SPR reflectance sensitivity varies with the refractive index of the test medium with a high sensitivity of 10-8 in refractive index unit to provide a powerful tool in thermo-fluids and nano-biochemical sensing. In this study, surface Plasmon resonance is for the first time applied and demonstrated to detect thermo-fluidic and optical properties in a label-free, real-time, and full-field manner using a laboratorydeveloped imaging system. Secondly, surface plasmon resonance technology is applied into energy conversion such as solar energy harvesting and enhanced energy transfer device. In solar energy harvesting, absorption enhancement by more than 20 fold is obtained using nano-bio hybrid nanostructure made of Photosystem I molecules and metal nanoparticles. For enhanced energy transfer device, research is conducted to increase density of state using hyperbolic metamaterials made of multilayer metal and dielectric thin films. Additionally, simple prefect absorption structure is developed to achieve omni-directional perfect absorption against common sense that thick thickness is required for higher absorption.Synergy of nanotechnology and engineering is expected to provide breakthrough in thermal sciences, nano-bio-chemical sensing and energy conversion applications such as solar energy and thermophotovoltaic as well as increase energy efficiency of energy systems.
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