The Application of Thin Film Ionic Self-assembled Multilayer (ISAM) Nanostructures in Electromechanical Bending Actuators and Micro-fabricated Gas Chromatography (uGC) Devices

Wang, Dong

The Application of Thin Film Ionic Self-assembled Multilayer (ISAM) Nanostructures in Electromechanical Bending Actuators and Micro-fabricated Gas Chromatography (uGC) Devices

dc.contributor.author	Wang, Dong	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Heflin, James R.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Gibson, Harry W.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Heremans, Jean J.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Robinson, Hans D.	en
dc.contributor.department	Physics	en
dc.date.accessioned	2015-01-15T09:00:08Z	en
dc.date.available	2015-01-15T09:00:08Z	en
dc.date.issued	2015-01-14	en
dc.description.abstract	Ionic self-assembled multilayer (ISAM) thin film nanostructures, including highly porous and conductive gold nanoparticles (GNP), and highly porous and thermally stable silica nanoparticles (SNP), were fabricated via the layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly technique. Their application in ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) electromechanical bending actuators and microfabricated gas chromatography (microGC) devices were investigated and significant performance improvements of these devices were achieved. IPMC bending actuators, consisting of an ionic electroactive polymer (iEAP) membrane as backbone, ionic liquids (IL) as electrolyte, and ISAM GNP thin film as porous electrode, were fabricated and investigated. The influences of humidity, conductive network composite (CNC), and IL uptake on the bending performance were examined and discussed. An equivalent circuit model to simulate both the electrical and mechanical responses was also proposed and experimentally verified. Moreover, IPMC actuators made from other newly synthesized iEAP membranes were fabricated and tested. Some of them showed promising performance that was comparable or even better as compared to the ones made from Nafion. LbL fabricated ISAM SNPs thin film coatings were also applied in the microGC devices including micro fabricated thermal preconcentrators (microTPC) and separation columns (microSC) as adsorbent and stationary phase materials, respectively. New fabrication approaches were developed to selectively coat uniform conformal ISAM SNP coatings in these devices with different 3D microstructures. Thus, functionalized microTPCs and microSCs showed good performance, which can be further improved by using the ISAM SNPs coating as a nanotemplate for modifying additional polymer adsorbents or as the anchor sites for incorporating functional molecules for targeting detection.	en
dc.description.degree	Ph. D.	en
dc.format.medium	ETD	en
dc.identifier.other	vt_gsexam:4363	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/51186	en
dc.publisher	Virginia Tech	en
dc.rights	In Copyright	en
dc.rights.uri	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/	en
dc.subject	Ionic Self-Assembled Multilayers	en
dc.subject	Layer-by-Layer Self-Assembled Nanostructures	en
dc.subject	Ionic Electroactive Polymeric Actuators	en
dc.subject	Microelectromechnical Gas Chromatography Devices	en
dc.title	The Application of Thin Film Ionic Self-assembled Multilayer (ISAM) Nanostructures in Electromechanical Bending Actuators and Micro-fabricated Gas Chromatography (uGC) Devices	en
dc.type	Dissertation	en
thesis.degree.discipline	Physics	en
thesis.degree.grantor	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	en
thesis.degree.level	doctoral	en
thesis.degree.name	Ph. D.	en