Title: Manufacturing Nanowire-Based Sensors via Flow-Guided Assembly in Microarray Template
Reporter: Shengnian Wang
Time: 10:30a.m., June 10th , 2015
Venue: Room 207, Building No.16, Wushan Campus

Abstract:
Nanowires hold tremendous potentials to build next-generation sensors. Compared to the thin film planar counterparts, these devices better define the accumulation or depletion of charge carriers to attain ultrahigh sensitivity. However, their wide adoption is seriously impeded from the great challenges on the fabrication, integration, and manufacturing of nanowire-based electronics. We adopt microchannel-based templates in the fabrication of nanowire-based sensing system. A novel flow-guided assembly approach we invented, in which polymer strands are aligned and patterned along microchannels via air blowing to produce highly ordered nanowire arrays with each nanowire centimeter long and having tunable diameter. Unlike in other template synthesis processes where nanowires are randomly distributed on sensing substrates, our approach pre-defines the position and patterns of nanowires at desired locations (e.g., between the contact micropads). The polymer nanowires were further made conductive and integrated as nanowire field emission transistors to test its protein sensing performance. Their small lateral size, high surface-to-volume ratio, and tunable quantum confinement effect demonstrate nonlinear behaviors on the mobility of carriers and ultrahigh sensitivities.
Short Bio: Dr. Shengnian Wang, is the Harrelson Family Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering, of Louisiana Tech University. He got his BS, MS, and PhD from Zhejiang University, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Ohio State University, respectively, all in Chemical Engineering. He had his post-doctoral training at the National Science Foundation Center for Affordable Nanostructures of Polymeric Biomedical Nanodevices (CANPBND). Dr. Wang is the program chair for PhD of Engineering (micro/nano track) for the College of Engineering and Science at Louisiana Tech University. He is also the programming chair of the Transport and Energy Process (TEP) Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE). His current research interests focus on designing and manufacturing nanomaterials for energy and biomedical applications, with research projects supported by NIH, NSF, and State of Louisiana. He has published 30+ papers in peer-reviewed journals including Advanced Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Analytical Chemistry, Physical Review Letters, Lab Chip, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Biomicrofluidics, Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology, Journal of Power Sources, Electrophoresis, and others.