Bio-mimetic nanostructured thin films for surface-active devices

Nano-scale materials are known to offer significant advantages in surface activity and quantum effects, but their integration into thin-films for interactive devices is often limited by the surface area of the film, and the tendency of nanocomponents to proliferate into the environment. Many natural living systems address these challenges through elegant hierachical surface architectures such as microvilli and dendrites, where a larger substrate is covalently anchored to progressively smaller functional entities. This three-dimensional surface design offers exceptionally high levels of solid-fluid interaction in very compact space for important functions such as electrical/thermal transport, bio-scaffolding, adsorption and catalysis. However, this architecture has been traditionally avoided in engineered devices due to the complexities of creating strong primary bonds between components having different size, shape and compositions to form a durable integrated solid. In recent years, advances in surface engineering and nanoscale processing have made fabrication of these types of surface coatings possible in our laboratory, which provide several advantages over conventional films. This talk will present processing-structure-property relationships of some of these materials with special emphasis on three selected applications: micro fluidic devices, solid state heat exchangers for power electronics, and pollutant degradation membranes.