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NTU-RPI-DTU Innovation Workshop June 2014

Student peer evaluation
Projects 2014
Projects 2014
Page last edited by Kristian Mølhave (krmo) 18/02-2015

Projects for the NTU-RPI-DTU Innovation workshop 2014

The information here is under continuous revision.

More info on the course website: http://dtu.cnwiki.dk/innovation2014/

Experimental Facilities:

  • DTUs microscopy facility as courteously agreed to provide access, so suitable projects have the possibility to use the very advanced microscopes available there:
    The Center for Electron Nanoscopy (CEN) has a suite of seven complementary electron microscopes, comprising two scanning electron microscopes (SEMs), two dual beam (SEM combined with a focused ion beam, FIB), an FEI Tecnai transmission electron microscope (TEM) and two “high end” FEI Titan TEMs. We will pre-book a time on the Tecnai microscopes a few days into the 2nd week of the course for characterising your samples.
    For more info go to www.cen.dtu.dk .
  • Booked SEM and TEM sessions - see the internal wiki
  • The DTU students have taken the required safety courses and therefore have access to the Danchip cleanroom facility, which hosts a wide range of fabrications and characterization equipment in a 1500 m² clean room consisting of class 1000 - 10 areas. www.danchip.dtu.dk
  • A wide range of miscellaneous equipment is also available during the projects - highlights include two microRaman DXR spectrometers from ThermoFisher, a Gamry potentiostat, a large number of Keithley programmable sourcemeters, A Black Magic CVD system for graphene growth, optical microscopes equipped with large area automated scanning stages and timelapse functionality, and more.

In case of any questions, you can always contact:

*Kristian Mølhave on Mobile phone 0045 2512 6672, email krmo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk, SkypeID KristianMolhave

*Tim Booth Mobile on Mobile phone 0045 4242 6684, email tibo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk, SkypeID tim.j.booth

Project No 1:    SERS detection of melamine

Report download

Students
NTU: Pow Poh Yih 
RPI: Stephanie Pelton, Malaney Young
DTU: -

 

Supervisors
NTU:    -
RPI:     Aram Chung < chunga6 (at) rpi.edu >
DTU:    Michael Stenbæk Schmidt < Michael.Schmidt (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >
- and Kristian Mølhave < krmo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk > & Tim Booth < tibo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >

 

Outline:

In recent years toxic melamine has been added to various dairy products in order to boost the apparent protein content at a low cost.

Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy has been shown to be a possible method for rapid detection of malicious melamine additives to dairy products*.

Using state of the art Raman effect enhancing substrates developed at DTU Nanotech, we aim at developing a rapid method of detecting trace levels of melamine in various test solutions as well as dairy products.

 

Suggested reading material:

Pdf files available in the campusnet group / file-sharing 

  1. Kim A, Barcelo SJ, Williams RS, Li Z. Melamine Sensing in Milk Products by Using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering. Anal Chem. 2012 Oct 8;84(21):9303–9.
  2. Sivashanmugan K, Liao J-D, Liu BH, Yao C-K. Focused-ion-beam-fabricated Au nanorods coupled with Ag nanoparticles used as surface-enhanced Raman scattering-active substrate for analyzing trace melamine constituents in solution. Analytica Chimica Acta. 2013 Oct 24;800(0):56–64. 
  3. Yun Suk Huh, Aram J. Chung, David Erickson. Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy and its application to molecular and cellular analysis. Microfluid Nanofluid 2009 6:285--297

 

Practicalities:

  • Various steps of the substrate fabrication is possible at DTU - the details must be coordinated with Michael in advance.
  • SERS on pre-fabricated substrates is possible at DTU when organized with Micahel in advance.
  • SEM can be done at CEN 'anytime' provided we book the instrument in advance.

 

Project No 2: Inertial focusing and collecting of small particles (virus size) from water

Report download

Students
NTU: Tan Pei Leng
RPI: Kevin Li, Caity Moore
DTU: ?

 

Supervisors
NTU:     ?
RPI:     Aram Chung < chunga6 (at) rpi.edu >
DTU:    Noemi Rozlosnik and Mark Holm Olsen < maol (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >
- and Kristian Mølhave < krmo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk > & Tim Booth < tibo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >

 

Outline:

Water-borne viral diseases pose high risks for public health worldwide. Very low concentrations of dangerous viruses in the water can cause severe disease. For detection of this small amount of viruses in water, it is important to increase the concentration.

In this project, you will work on finding a method to up-concentrate and collect the smallest possible particles in aqueous solution. Inertial focusing is an up and coming technology and will be the desired technique utilized during this project. Inertial focusing allows for high throughput sorting of micro (and nano?) particles at high (1-100) Reynolds numbers. The project will include experimental testing, including fast prototyping of a polymer based microfluidic system and flow analysis with fluorescence microscopy. Its is a possibility that you compare intertial and dielectrophoretic (DEP) focussing/sorting.

 

Suggested reading material:

Pdf files available in the campusnet group / file-sharing 

  • Di Carlo D. Inertial microfluidics. Lab on a Chip. 2009;9(21):3038.
  • Karimi A, Yazdi S, Ardekani AM. Hydrodynamic mechanisms of cell and particle trapping in microfluidics. Biomicrofluidics. 2013 Mar 1;7(2):021501. 
  • Nano 1 - Course book 2013 chapter 6.3 on DEP.

 

Practicalities:

  • Microfluidic experiments demonstrating basic dielectrophoretic an be done with Mark at any time - book him advance! Intertial focusing experiments can be done provided channel systems are supplied by Aram.
  • Aram can provide molds for pdms stamps for microfluidic channels - deciding if its possible integrating these into an experiment at DTU will be up to you to.
  • possibly work on trying to do high speed camera recording on it - we will buy a cheap high speed camera that you can try mounting on the microscope.

 

Project No 3: Carbon electrodes (3D merged with micro- and nanostructured electrodes)

Report download

Students
NTU: Ho Jun Yun Charles 
RPI: Connor Spain
DTU: Kristoffer Mathiesen, Niels Dyreborg Nielsen, Sebastian Molbech Hansen

 

Supervisors
NTU:    Kong Ling Bing  < ELBKong (at) ntu.edu.sg > and Alex Yan < AlexYan (at) ntu.edu.sg > (will stay at NTU during the course)
RPI:  Dan Lewis < dlewis2 (at) rpi.edu >
DTU:    Jenny Emnéus, Arto Heiskanen < arhe (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >, Stephan Sylvest Keller < Stephan.Keller (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >
- and Kristian Mølhave < krmo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk > & Tim Booth < tibo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >

 

Outline:

In this project you should perform a literature review on the methods used for creating carbon electrodes for a range of applications and propose possible ways to improve the current state of art based on simple test experiments.

We are developing three-dimensional scaffold structures in carbon (3D carbon scaffolds) formed from different polymer precursors and in various dimensions, using UV-lithography followed by pyrolysis. We and others have found that depending on the original polymer precursor used, the resulting carbon scaffold has different conducting and/or catalytic properties. These 3D carbon scaffolds could among other things be suitable for biofilm formation in biofuel cells (as both anode and cathode) and as catalysts in fuel cells. The suggested projects thus proposes to develop various polymer precursor templates using UV lithography, their subsequent pyrolysis , and investigation of their conductive behavior in a biofuel setting.

At last years innovation workshop, several projects looked into supercapacitor structures, and this project can also follow up in this, with emphasis on comparing performance of bulk electrodes with those of lithographically defined structures. You could consider different ways of creating the electrodes such as structures made of grapheme or from pyrolysed polymers. 

 

Suggested reading material:

Pdf files available in the campusnet group / file-sharing 

  1. Last years report on Fabrication of graphene micro-supercapacitors
  2. Last years report on Hierarchial composite carbon electrodes
  3. McCreery RL. Advanced Carbon Electrode Materials for Molecular Electrochemistry. Chemical Reviews. 2008 Jul;108(7):2646–87.
  4. Wang C, Zaouk R, Park BY, Madou MJ. Carbon as a MEMS material: micro and nanofabrication of pyrolysed photoresist carbon. International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management. 2008;13(2):360–75.
  5. Pyrolysis chapter (in pdf) from PhD Thesis by Letizia Amato, DTU.. 

Possible additional reading

  1. Arthur TS, Bates DJ, Cirigliano N, Johnson DC, Malati P, Mosby JM, et al. Three-dimensional electrodes and battery architectures. MRS Bulletin. 2011 Jul;36(07):523–31.
  2. Long JW, Dunn B, Rolison DR, White HS. Three-Dimensional Battery Architectures. Chemical Reviews. 2004 Oct;104(10):4463–92.

 

Practicalities:

  • Possible laboratory work could be:
    - with Stephan, the fabrication of pyrolyzed electrodes (patterned or unpatterned) based on photoresist or SU-8, which should not take more than 1 day. Stephan can be in the cleanroom with you for this some day between 16-20/6.
    - With Arto: electrochemical characterization of the electrodes - measuring capacitance as supercapacitors, and redox processes by cyclic voltammetry (CV). he has time one week from 17th
  • SEM can be done at CEN 'anytime' provided we book the instrument in advance.

 

Project No 4: Lithium air batteries

Report download

Students
NTU: Jasper Chua
RPI: Benn Pearce
DTU: Maxime Dupont, Frederik Kjær Larsen, Martin Schmidt

 

Supervisors
NTU:    Ali Rinaldi < ali.rinaldi (at) tum-create.edu.sg > , Harry Hoster (NTU - TUM Create)
RPI: Dan Lewis < dlewis2 (at) rpi.edu >
DTU:   Poul Norby < pnor (at) dtu.dk >, Rolf Møller-Nielsen <rerom (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >
- and Kristian Mølhave < krmo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk > & Tim Booth < tibo (at) nanotech.dtu.dk >

 

Outline:

Lithium air batteries are one of the most promising battery systems for transport applications, but also an challenging system to create. This project aims at studying the processes involving Lithium peroxide on carbon electrodes. One aspect is to find novel ways to image the process to improve our understanding of them.

 

Suggested reading material  (prioritized):

Pdf files available in the campusnet group / file-sharing 

  1. Christensen J, Albertus P, Sanchez-Carrera RS, Lohmann T, Kozinsky B, Liedtke R, et al. A Critical Review of Li/Air Batteries. J Electrochem Soc. 2011 Jan 1;159(2):R1–R30.
  2. Padbury R, Zhang X. Lithium–oxygen batteries—Limiting factors that affect performance. Journal of Power Sources. 2011 May;196(10):4436–44.
  3. Tran CD. Investigation of oxygen reduction on the carbon gas-diffusion electrode in non-aqueous electrolyte. 2011; Available from: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/chemistry_theses/1/
  4. Girishkumar G, McCloskey B, Luntz AC, Swanson S, Wilcke W. Lithium−Air Battery: Promise and Challenges. J Phys Chem Lett. 2010 Jul 15;1(14):2193–203.

 

Practicalities:

  • Assembliy of a Li Air battery can be done at Risø with Poul Norby on 19/6 (excl 12:30-14:30) and on 20/6
  • Dan Lewis can train in SEM at RPI before going to DTU.
  • SEM can be done at CEN 'anytime' provided we book the instrument in advance.

 

 

 
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