Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Chair

Ranganathan Gopalakrishnan

Committee Member

John Hochstein

Committee Member

Jeffrey Marchetta

Committee Member

Sanay Mishra

Abstract

Aerosol systems play a vital role in controlling the global environment, ecology and biodiversity. Engineering applications of aerosol, such as drug delivery, mass spectrometry, aerosol jet printing, and some others, evolve to understand the importance of aerosol in nature and to replicate the natural benefit of aerosol in engineering products. With the advancement of science and technology, aerosol research is progressing in terms of its better characterization and application in different fields. This dissertation addresses three specific engineering applications of aerosol particles focusing of aerosol-based nanoparticles, aerosol generation from powder phase materials, and application of TiO2 aerosol for thin-film fabrication. The first part of the dissertation proposes a new method of focusing aerosol-based nanoparticles through a computational study that would help to break the Brownian diffusion limit of particle focusing as well as to obtain a highly collimated beam of nanoparticles. In the second part of the dissertation, a novel concept of aerosol generation method from powder phase materials has been experimentally evaluated, some modifications and suggestions have been made to establish the concept of aerosolization into a product. This aerosol generation method is scalable and can be used to obtain a high yet tunable concentration of aerosol from powder phase materials. In addition, this method also offers better particle de-agglomeration. The last part of the dissertation presents an experimental study in conjunction with computational analysis to understand and optimize the critical parameters of the TiO2 thin film fabrication process on glass substrate using aerosol impact consolidation method. It was observed that although repeated coating initially builds up the thickness of the film, however, there is a point of diminishing returns at which continued attempts at deposition starts to erode and can even completely remove the film afterwards. Also, the study reveals the effect of chamber pressure and nozzle geometry on the deposition performance.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

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