Aluru N.R. – Page 2 – TechConnect Briefs

Electrically Triggered Hydrogels: Mathematical Models and Simulations

Chatterjee A.N., De S.K., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois, US

Environmentally sensitive hydrogels have enormous potential in various applications. Ionic polymer gels have been shown to respond to a number of different stimuli like pH and electric field. One of the major advantages of electro-responsive [...]

Simulation of Carbon Nanotube-based Nanoelectromechanical Switches

Dequesnes M., Rotkin S.V., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

We study the pull-in voltage characteristics of several multiwall nanotube electromechanical switches such as suspended carbon nanotubes over a graphitic ground lectrode. Electromechanical analysis has been performed by accounting for three coupled energy domains: elastostatics, [...]

Transient Analysis of Electroosmotic Flow in Nano-diameter Channels

Qiao R., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

Transient analysis of electroosmotic flow in a nano-diameter channel is presented. The time for flow to reach steady state in a nano-diameter channel for various Debye lengths is investigated by solving the Navier-Stokes equations in [...]

Combining Computational Chemistry and Computational Electronics to Understand Protein Ion Channels

van der Straaten T., Varma S., Chiu S-W, Tang J., Aluru N.R., Eisenberg R.S., Ravaioli U., Jakobsson E., University of Illinois, US

Nanoscale computational engineering can be achieved by combining atomic and molecular scale methods of computational chemistry with coarser-grained continuum theories used in computational electronics. Each computational discipline is quite different; yet both must give the [...]

Dynamic Analysis of Electrostatic MEMS by Meshless Methods

Li G., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

Electrostatically actuated microstructures are widely used in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Computational analysis of electrostatic MEMS requires a self-consistent solution of the interior elastic domain and the exterior electrostatic domain. This paper proposes an efficient approach [...]

A Compact Model for Flowrate and Pressure Computation in Micro-fluidic Devices

Qiao R., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

A compact model to compute flowrate and pressure in micro-fluidic devices is presented. The micro-fluidic flow can be driven by either an applied electric field or by a pressure gradient or both. In the proposed [...]

Transient Analysis of Electroosmotic Flow in Nano-diameter Channels

Qiao R., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

Transient analysis of electroosmotic flow in a nano-diameter channel is presented. The time for flow to reach steady state in a nano-diameter channel for various Debye lengths is investigated by solving the Navier-Stokes equations in [...]

A Combined DSMC/Meshless Technique for Multiscale Analysis of Microfluidic Filters

Aktas O., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

A multiscale method that couples a meshless Stokes solver and a DSMC simulator is reported. The method is based on overlapped Schwarz alternating method with Dirichlet-Dirichlet type boundary conditions for domain decomposition and meshless interpolation

Modeling of Ionic Hydrogel Kinetics in Buffered Solutions

Ohs R.R., De S.K., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

In this paper, we present the meshless Finite Cloud Method (FCM) for the solution of a time-dependent partial differential equation governing ionic gel swelling. Using a point distribution, FCM constructs interpolation functions without assuming any [...]

A Novel Approach for Determining Pull-In Voltages in Micro-electro-mechanical Systems (MEMS)

Long D.S., Shannon M.A., Aluru N.R., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US

In this paper we introduce a novel method, based on the Lagrange Multiplier Method (LMM), for calculating pull-in voltages in MEMS. This method combines the finite-element with a displacement constraint and boundary element method. The [...]