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The safe integration of cardiovascular devices requires the sustainable coverage of their luminal surface by endothelial cells (ECs). The engineering of active surface textures has the potential to coordinate cellular adhesion and migration under the action of hemodynamic forces. We define a paradigm to rationally design textures maximizing EC activities as a function of the applied stresses. This is based on harnessing the adhesions established by ECs through fine-tuning of the vertical extend of the underlying surface nanotopography.

We report the effect of water nanoconfinement on the thermal transport properties of two neighbor hydrophilic quartz interfaces. A significant increase and a nonintuitive, nonmonotonic dependence of the overall interfacial thermal conductance between the quartz surfaces on the water layer thickness were found. By probing the interfacial structure and vibrational properties of the connected components, we demonstrated that the mechanism of the peak occurring at submonolayer water originates from the freezing of water molecules at extremely confined conditions and the excellent match of vibrational states between trapped water and hydrophilic headgroups on the two contact surfaces. Our results show that incorporation of polar molecules into hydrophilic interfaces is very promising to enhance the thermal transport through thermally smooth connection of these interfaces.

We report on a novel method for local control of shell engineering in multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) using Joule-heating induced electric breakdown. By modulating the heat dissipation along a nanotube, we can confine its thinning and shell breakdown to occur within localized regions of peak temperatures, which are distributed over one-half of the NT length. The modulation is achieved by using suitably designed nanomachined heat sinks with different degrees of thermal coupling at different parts of a current-carrying nanotube. The location of electric breakdown occurs precisely at the regions of high temperatures predicted by the classical finite-element model of Joule heating in the MWNT. The experiments herein provide new insight into the electric breakdown mechanism and prove unambiguously that shell removal occurs due to thermal stress, underpinning the diffusive nature of MWNTs. The method demonstrated here has the potential to be a powerful tool in realizing MWNT bearings with complex architectures for use in integrated nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). In addition, the breakdown current and power in the nanotubes are significantly higher than those observed in nanotubes without heat removal via additional heat sinks. This indicates future avenues for enhancing the performance of MWNTs in electrical interconnect and nanoelectronic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By employing continuous Gaussian laser irradiation in tandem with a specifically designed drop-on-demand jetting system, nanoparticle inks were printed and sintered on glass substrate. A toluene solvent is employed as the carrier of gold nanoparticles possessing a lower melting temperature than that of bulk gold. Marangoni flow due to radial surface tension gradient combined with a moving substrate displaces nanoparticle ink in front of and around the laser spot. Experiments were carried out changing incident laser power, focused beam waist, and translation speed, and resulting phenomena at different conditions were explained. Strong coalescence occurred from 9000–14000 W/cm2, and a gold line with 8 μm of width was demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this letter, the process of priming and laser curing of nanoparticle solutions is presented. A liquid solvent is employed as the carrier of gold nanoparticles (the material of interest in this study) possessing a low melting temperature compared to that of bulk gold. Using a specifically designed printing system, the gold nanoparticle solution is deposited on a substrate and cured with laser radiation. In this manner, the potential of writing gold structures on temperature sensitive substrates is demonstrated. The interaction between the laser radiation and nanoparticles drives the solvent evaporation and controls the quality of the microstructures printing process. The latter is also affected by thermocapillary flow at the free surface, developing during the curing process. An optical method for estimating the curing times is also developed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work investigates the coalescence process of two gold nanoparticles for a host of initial temperatures and starting radii in vacuum with the help of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Diverse mechanisms of the first sintering stage, characterized by a growing neck region, were found. The results are compared with a phenomenological macroscopic model based on an energy balance and supplemented by a model for the surface variation of the nanosystem under consideration. The model is also modified to account for the curvature dependence of the melting temperature of the nanoparticles. Accounting for the findings of the MD simulations for the neck growth rate, the validity of the analytical model with the initial temperature and radius of the particle is shown. The calculations were extended to particles having radii between 9.5 and 25 Å. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Nanofluids have been proposed to improve the performance of microchannel heat sinks. In this paper, we present a systematic characterization of aqueous silica nanoparticle suspensions with concentrations up to 31 vol %. We determined the particle morphology by transmission electron microscope imaging and its dispersion status by dynamic light scattering measurements. The thermophysical properties of the fluids, namely, their specific heat, density, thermal conductivity, and dynamic viscosity were experimentally measured. We fabricated microchannel heat sinks with three different channel widths and characterized their thermal performance as a function of volumetric flow rate for silica nanofluids at concentrations by volume of 0%, 5%, 16%, and 31%. The Nusselt number was extracted from the experimental results and compared with the theoretical predictions considering the change of fluids bulk properties. We demonstrated a deviation of less than 10% between the experiments and the predictions. Hence, standard correlations can be used to estimate the convective heat transfer of nanofluids. In addition, we applied a one-dimensional model of the heat sink, validated by the experiments. We predicted the potential of nanofluids to increase the performance of microchannel heat sinks. To this end, we varied the individual thermophysical properties of the coolant and studied their impact on the heat sink performance. We demonstrated that the relative thermal conductivity enhancement must be larger than the relative viscosity increase in order to gain a sizeable performance benefit. Furthermore, we showed that it would be preferable to increase the volumetric heat capacity of the fluid instead of increasing its thermal conductivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]