Projects

Summer Research Projects

1) NASA Langley Research Center (NASA-LaRC)

• Characterization of thermal protection materials using electron microscopy
• Boron nitride nanostructured materials for extreme space

 

2) Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory (JLab)

• Design of stable perovskite solar cells

 

3) Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS)

• Nanoelectrode arrays in analysis of neural networks

 

4) Norfolk State University (NSU)

• Functional brain imaging using nanoelectrodes
• Laser Micromachining for neural probe applications
• Meta-material generation using tunable Laser irradiation

2020 Summer Program

Interdigitated Electrodes for Virus Sensing

Students designed the 100um Interdigitated Electrode with Metal Layer and Passivation Layer that fits in a 7mm x 22mm box using CAD software. The lithography was applied for electrode patterning.  All fabrication steps were live-streamed from Micron-NSU Nano Cleanroom Facility (MNCF), including photoresist coating, U.V. expose using a contact aligner and developing, wet etching to pattern electrodes, photoresist removal, negative photoresist (SU8) lithography. The fabricated electrodes were made and SEM image of electrode was shown.

Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy

Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is an electrochemical technique to measure the impedance of a system with the help of AC potentials frequency. Students used the mailed lab kit Analog Discovery kit (Digilent) to measure signals between working electrode and reference electrode and acquire the impedance data. They used ZSimpWin software (Ametek) to compute and plot the Bode and Nyquist plots for analyzing the impedance of electrodes on different solutions.

Gold Nanoparticle Synthesis

The procedure of making ruby red colloidal gold was performed at NSU Lab. The color of gold nanoparticles varies depending on the size and shape of the gold particles. The live-streamed lecture explains the procedure of colloidal gold synthesis and observes the gold nanoparticles using SEM.