The heat pipe augmented solar wall operates much more efficiently for domestic air heating than alternative passive solar technologies. The thermal diode effect of heat pipes reduces the insulating losses of the unit during nighttime and adverse...
The thesis focuses on improving the flowrate of the Knudsen gas pump. The Knudsen pump uses thermal transpiration as the driving mechanism to pump gas. It is a motionless gas pump as the pump does not require any moving actuators for pumping. The...
Nanoparticles are a class of materials that exhibit unique physical and chemical properties compared to those of the same material at the bulk scale. One method of enhancing the thermal conductivity, and hence the heat transfer coefficient, of a...
We have measured the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, K(T) of single walled carbon nanotubes from 300 K to 8 K by 3w methods. K(T) exhibits linear temperature dependence in the entire temperature range. Our results are in good agreement...
In July 1995, National Science Foundation Award # 9551869 funded the development of a new inter-disciplinary microfabrication course under the primary leadership of Dr. Kevin Walsh at the University of Louisville. Along with this award, the...
This dissertation demonstrates an elegant method, known as 'micro-origami' or strain architecture to design and fabricate three-dimensional MEMS structures which are assembled using actuation of a metal-oxide bilayer with conventional planar...
Residential buildings account for a large portion of total energy consumption in the United States. Residential energy usage can be dramatically reduced by improving the efficiency of building envelope systems. One such method is to incorporate...
Dermal wounds, including bed sores, pressure ulcers, and diabetic ulcers have a large impact on American healthcare costing up to $7 billion per year. Adequate pharmaceutical remedies applied at constant rate could prove to increase the healing...
The Knudsen pump works on the principle of thermal transpiration. As a result of requiring a thermal gradient, channel hydraulic diameter smaller than the mean free path of the gas being pumped, and having no moving parts, the Knudsen pump features...
Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT), known for its ferroelectric properties, is widely used in micro-electromechanical (MEMS) and nano-electromechanical (NEMS) devices. PZT is a ceramic material that is most commonly found in its sol gel form, which...
Fiber-reinforced polymer matrix composites (PMCs) using high-temperature thermoplastics as the matrix material represent a lightweight design solution for applications above 250°F. This is often required for aircraft structures subjected to...
The past decade has brought about major advances in the realms of both
healthcare and biometrics. New technologies and techniques in the field of biometrics
has allowed for the quick and efficient identification of people, while new...
Heat pipes; Solar heating--Passive systems; Solar heating--Research; Solar energy--Research
The one dimensional heat transfer, thermal diode effect of heat pipes makes
them ideal for passive solar applications. Gains in a heat pipe passive solar wall are not
lost during cloud cover or periods of low irradiation. An experimental model was...
The discovery of carbon nanotubes and subsequently graphene has led to an interest in carbon materials as sensing elements due to their unique properties. Graphene is a 2-dimensional material that has a large surface area that can be exposed to...
Iron oxide, Fe2O3, is a promising material for water splitting reaction using solar
energy due to its stability and optimal bandgap of 2 eV. Even the recent efforts, however,
using Fe2O3 thin film materials reported low efficiencies due to poor...
G-quadruplexes are thought to have biological importance, with studies based on small molecule interactions and quadruplex-interactive antibodies demonstrating their potential for formation in vivo. One potential biological function of quadruplex...
Microhotplates for metal oxide gas sensors are fabricated using platinum microheaters and tested. Power consumption is monitored and temperature distributions are observed using infrared microscopy. Temperature line traces are extracted from the...
Microfabricated planar solar cells with an active solar collection area of 0.04cm2 were fabricated on n-type silicon wafers to test the viability of sputtered amorphous thin film photovoltaics for potential use in amorphous multijunction cells or...
This thesis is based on work done as part of a bigger project supported by Naval Research Laboratories (NRL). A MOSIS fabricated micro hotplate is simulated using the CAD software CoventorWare. There are three different sized hotplates in one die;...
More than 50% of the total energy produced is typically rejected in the form of waste heat from various processes. The grand challenge is that most of this waste heat is released at temperatures much lower than 1000 C, which makes it difficult to...
