A Website and CD to Support Teaching Materials at the Nanoscale
Project funded by 2004-05 Academic Development Funds
Miguel Jose Yacaman, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering - January 20, 2005
OVERVIEW:
Materials engineering is taught in several courses across the College. In particular, the Chemical Engineering course (ChE 350) is a core course that is growing in importance since many of our students will be employed in materials and related industries.
There are many excellent textbooks in materials science and engineering; however they have many shortcomings for a chemical engineering class. The support materials are almost entirely devoted to examples in the metallurgy industry. The other category of books is written specifically for the electronics industry and can hardly be used in a general introductory course. Our students need to connect materials with modern research topics, and that means biotechnology and nanotechnology. No textbook available makes a clear connection between these topics and materials engineering.
The object of this proposal will be to develop a nanotechnology web site and CD that will serve as supporting material for ChE 350. The site and CD can also be used in other nano activities across the College of Engineering.
The following are examples of the material that will be included:
- Coalescence of Metal nanoparticles showing liquid likes behavior but still being solid
- Metal nanoparticles changing crystal structure continuously at room temperature
- Particles with five-fold crystal symmetry forbidden in the bulk
- Melting of nanoparticles at temperatures half of the melting point of the bulk
- Carbon nanotubes (single wall) breaking only after a 1 Tpa stress
- E-Coli bacteria being destroyed by silver nanoparticles
- Chains of single carbon atoms being formed
- Wetting experiments at the nanolevel nanoparticles on spherical surfaces that be the question, are the thermodynamics valid at the nanolevel that describe macroscopic phenomena
- Coalescence sequences showing different routes for the Ostwald ripening and showing phenomena that only happen in the nanoworld such as ultra-fast crystallization waves
- Shapes of nanoparticles in the nanoworld-platonic solids, Archimedean solids and beyond. Was Kepler looking in the wrong direction?
- Carbon nanotubes Real (own material) and theoretical Images (link to many other available web sites)
- Carbon nanotubes coated with peptide-an approach to get inside the cell
- Links to other nano material sites in which calculations of properties can be performed or structural models of new structures can be made
Benefits: The materials will support not only the ChE350 course but also all the materials related courses at the graduate and undergraduate level. It will also be possible to use the web page to promote the nanotechnology activities of the College. The CD might be distributed nationally since it will contain original material not available anywhere else.