PhD Student

Project Title: Electro-thermo phoretic devices

Supervisors: Dr. Tim Albrecht and Dr. Fernando Bresme

The aim of my project is to fabricate eletro-thermo phoretic nanoscale devices to induce mass transport and manipulate molecules for analytical applications in electrophoretic, thermophoretic, electro-osmosis, thermoelectric and diffusion forces on fluids, particles or macromolecules, such as motion of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) or proteins. Nanochannels are used as a tool to physically and chemically control the mass transport at the nanoscale.

The development of this device requires a sound understanding of the mass mechanisms to control the mass transport at the nanoscale. The device will couple electric and thermal effects, opening a route to realise an energy conversion system. The most important feature of an electro-thermo phoretic device is its wide range of potential applications. It can work, for example, to detect and manipulate particles and macromolecules in terms of their different properties, to study molecular interactions, as a thermo-electric pump to mix or separate different fluid species or to regulate the injection of specific reagents in a chemical reactor, or as an electro-thermo phoretic filter able to separate particles from a liquid.

Through computer simulations a microscopic understanding of heat, mass and charge flows at the nanoscale will be attained and rationalised to predict new physical phenomena. To investigate molecular transport on this length scale, I am analysing the system through three approaches: at the molecular scale using molecular dynamic (MD) simulations, as a continuum subdivided into a finite number of simpler parts through finite element (FE) analysis and experimentally by the fabrication of microfluidic devices.