A new adhesive bonding method is introduced for microlamination architectures, for producing low-temperature microchannel arrays in a wide variety of metals. Sheet metal embossing and chemical etching processes have been used to produce sealing bosses and flow features, resulting in approximately 50% fewer laminae over traditional methods. These lamina designs are enabled by reduced bonding pressures required for the new method. An assembly process using adhesive dispense and cure is outlined to produce leak-free devices. Feasible fill ratios were determined to be 1.1 in general and 1.25 around fluid headers, largely due to gaps between faying surfaces caused by surface roughness. Bond strength investigation reveals robustness to surface conditions and a bond strength of 5.5-8.5 MPa using a 3X safety factor. Dimensional characterization reveals a two sigma (95%) post-bonded channel height tolerance under 10% (9.6%) after bonding. Patterning tolerance and surface roughness of the faying laminae were found to have a significant influence on the final postbonded channel height. Leakage and burst pressure testing on several samples has established confidence that adhesive bonding can produce leak-free joints. Operating pressures up to 413 kPa have been satisfied, equating to tensile pressure on bond joints of 1.9 MPa. Higher operating pressures can be accommodated by increasing the bond area of devices. A two-fluid counterflow microchannel heat exchanger has been redesigned, fabricated and tested to demonstrate feasibility of the new method. Results show greater effectiveness and higher heat transfer rates, suggesting a smaller device than the original heat exchanger. A maximum effectiveness of 82.5% was achieved with good agreement between theoretical and experimental values. Although thermal performance was improved, higher pressure drops were noted. Pressure drops were predicted with a maximum error of 16% between theoretical and experimental values. Much of the pressure drop was found to be in the device manifolds, which can be improved in subsequent designs. Fluid flow simulation results show a 45-65X reduction in fluid leakage velocity past sealing bosses, thereby mitigating adhesive erosion concerns. Theoretical models indicate that the worst-case adhesive erosion rate is 1/12th the rate of aluminum and 1/7th the rate of stainless steel, implying satisfactory reliability in high fluid velocity applications. Economic comparison indicates an 83% reduction in material cost and 71% reduction in assembly cost with the new adhesive bonding process, when compared to diffusion bonding for the recuperator investigated in this study. Adhesive compatibility with common refrigerants is reviewed through literature references, with no adverse compatibility issues noted. The findings of this research suggest a fairly quick path to commercialization for the new bonding method. Future studies required to pursue commercialization are liquid and gas permeability evaluations, and long term strength and performance testing of adhesives in targeted applications. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from Mar. 26, 2012 - Mar. 26, 2013

Since the introduction of electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI), there has been an unprecedented growth of biomolecule analysis using mass spectrometry (MS). One of the most popular applications for mass spectrometry is the field of proteomics, which has emerged as the next scientific challenge in the post-genome era. One critical step in proteomic analysis is sample preparation, a major bottleneck that is attributed to many time consuming and labor-intensive steps involved. Microfluidics can play an important role in proteome sample preparation due to its ability to handle small volumes of sample and reagent, and its capability to integrate multiple processes on a single chip with the potential for high-throughput analysis. However, to utilize microfluidic systems for proteome analysis, an efficient interface between microfluidic chip and mass spectrometry is required. This thesis presents several methods for coupling of microfluidic chips with ESI-MS and MALDIMS. III Three microfluidic-ESI interfaces were developed. The first interface involves fabricating a polymer based microchannel at the rectangular corners of the glass substrates using a single photolithography step. The second interface was build upon the previous interface in which a digital microfluidic platform was integrated with the microchannel in a “top-down” format. The integrated microfluidic system was used for inline quantification of amino acids in dried blood spots that have been processed by digital microfluidics. The third interface was formed by sandwiching a pulled glass capillary emitter between two digital microfluidic substrates. This method is a simpler and more direct coupling of digital microfluidics with ESI-MS as compared to the method used for second interface. Finally, a strategy using a removable plastic “skin” was developed to interface digital microfluidics with MALDI-MS for offline sample analysis. We demonstrated the utility of this format by implementing on-chip protein digestion on immobilized enzyme depots.

Since the introduction of electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI), there has been an unprecedented growth of biomolecule analysis using mass spectrometry (MS). One of the most popular applications for mass spectrometry is the field of proteomics, which has emerged as the next scientific challenge in the post-genome era. One critical step in proteomic analysis is sample preparation, a major bottleneck that is attributed to many time consuming and labor-intensive steps involved. Microfluidics can play an important role in proteome sample preparation due to its ability to handle small volumes of sample and reagent, and its capability to integrate multiple processes on a single chip with the potential for high-throughput analysis. However, to utilize microfluidic systems for proteome analysis, an efficient interface between microfluidic chip and mass spectrometry is required. This thesis presents several methods for coupling of microfluidic chips with ESI-MS and MALDIMS. III Three microfluidic-ESI interfaces were developed. The first interface involves fabricating a polymer based microchannel at the rectangular corners of the glass substrates using a single photolithography step. The second interface was build upon the previous interface in which a digital microfluidic platform was integrated with the microchannel in a “top-down” format. The integrated microfluidic system was used for inline quantification of amino acids in dried blood spots that have been processed by digital microfluidics. The third interface was formed by sandwiching a pulled glass capillary emitter between two digital microfluidic substrates. This method is a simpler and more direct coupling of digital microfluidics with ESI-MS as compared to the method used for second interface. Finally, a strategy using a removable plastic “skin” was developed to interface digital microfluidics with MALDI-MS for offline sample analysis. We demonstrated the utility of this format by implementing on-chip protein digestion on immobilized enzyme depots.

AEGIS (Antimatter Experiment, Gravity, Interferometry and Spectroscopy) isan experiment under development at CERN which will measure earth's gravitationalforce on antimatter. This will be done by creating a horizontal pulsedbeam of low energy antihydrogen, an atom consisting of an antiproton anda positron. The experiment will measure the vertical de ection of the beamthrough which it is possible to calculate the gravitational constant for antimatter.To characterise the production process in the current state of the experimentit is necessary to develop an imaging detector for single excited hydrogenatoms. This thesis covers the design phase of that detector and includes studiesand tests of detector components. Following literature studies, tests and havingdiscarded several potential designs, a baseline design was chosen. The suggesteddetector will contain a set of ionising rings followed by an electron multiplyingmicrochannel plate, a light emitting phosphor screen, a lens system and nallya CCD camera for readout. The detector will be able to detect single hydrogenatoms, measure their time of ight as well as being able to image electronplasmas and measure the time of ight of the initial particles in such a plasma.Tests were made to determine the behaviour of microchannel plates at the lowtemperatures used in the experiment. Especially, the resistance and multiplicationfactor of the microchannel plates have been measured at temperaturesdown to 14 K. / AEGIS

Experimental measurements and numerical simulations have been performed on copper and aluminum microchannel heatsinks of 300, 420, 500, and 900 &amp / #956 / m channel widths. The heatsinks have been designed specifically for use with T/R (transmit/receive) module cooling applications of military phased array radars. An analytical calculation was also performed to aid in the design methodology. Distilled water was used as the coolant with flow rates ranging from 0.50 lpm (liters per minute) to 1.00 lpm. Local heat fluxes as high as 100 W/cm2 were tested. Upon completion of the experiments, the thermally best performing specimen, the 300 &amp / #956 / m copper specimen, yielded a maximum temperature rise of 26.1 &deg / C between the heat load and coolant inlet, at a coolant flow rate of 1.00 lpm and local heat flux of 100 W/cm2, leading to a thermal resistance of 0.63 &deg / C/W. The pressure drop measured across the heatsink under these conditions was 0.030 bar. Numerical simulations were carried out using the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT&reg / . Effects of thermal interface layers and heat spreading due to the localized heat load were investigated. Simulation results for temperature were seen to agree fairly well with experimental data as long as thermal interface layers were accounted for. The study showed that the T/R modules of military phased array radars, dissipating as high as 100 W/cm2 locally, could be cooled within the limits of the harsh environmental conditions required of military applications with moderate pressure drops.

In this study, effect of surface roughness on convective heat transfer and fluid flow in two dimensional parallel plate microchannels is analyzed by numerically. For this purpose, single-phase, developing, laminar fluid flow at steady state and in the slip flow regime is considered. The continuity, momentum, and energy equations for Newtonian fluids are solved numerically for constant wall temperature boundary condition. Slip velocity and temperature jump at wall boundaries are imposed to observe the rarefaction effect. Effect of axial conduction inside the fluid and viscous dissipation also considered separately. Roughness elements on the surfaces are simulated by triangular geometrical obstructions. Then, the effect of these roughness elements on the velocity field and Nusselt number are compared to the results obtained from the analyses of flows in microchannels with smooth surfaces. It is found that increasing surface roughness reduces the heat transfer at continuum conditions. However in slip flow regime, increase in Nusselt number with increasing roughness height is observed. Moreover, this increase is found to be more obvious at low rarefied flows. It is also found that presence of axial conduction and viscous dissipation has increasing effect on heat transfer in smooth and rough channels.

In this study simultaneously developing single phase, laminar and incompressible flow in a micro gap between parallel plates is numerically analyzed by including the effect of variation in thermal conductivity and viscosity with temperature. Variable property solutions for continuity, momentum and energy equations are performed in a coupled manner, for air as a Newtonian fluid. In these analyses the rarefaction effect, which is important for the slip flow regime, is taken into account by imposing slip velocity and temperature jump boundary conditions to the wall boundaries. Mainly, the influence of viscous dissipation, axial conduction, geometric parameters and rarefaction on the property variation effect is aimed to be discussed in detail. Therefore, the effects of variable thermal conductivity and viscosity are investigated simultaneously with the effects of rarefaction, geometric parameters, viscous dissipation and axial conduction. The difference between constant and variable solutions in terms of heat transfer characteristics is related to the effects of viscous dissipation axial conduction and rarefaction. According to results, property variation is substantially effective in the entrance region where temperature and velocity gradients are high. On the other hand, property variation effects are not significant for fully developed air flows in microchannel.

This study has two main objectives: The performance evaluation of existing microchannel heat sinks using a CFD model, and the dimensional optimization of various heat sinks by minimizing the total thermal resistance. For the analyses, the geometric modeling is performed using the software GAMBIT while the thermal analysis is performed with FLUENT. The developed model compares very well with those available in the literature. Eight different metal-polymer microchannel heat sinks are analyzed using the model to find out how much heat could be provided to the systems while keeping the substrate temperatures below 85&deg / C under a constant pumping power requirement. Taking the objective function as the total thermal resistance, the optimum geometries have been obtained for the mentioned metal-polymer heat sinks as well as more conventional silicon ones. The results of the optimization code agreed very well with available ones in the literature. In the optimization study, the Intel Core i7-900 Desktop Processor Extreme Edition Series is considered as a reference processor which is reported to dissipate 130 W of heat and to have chip core dimensions of 1.891 cm &times / 1.44 cm. A dimensional optimization study has been performed for various copper and silicon microchannel heat sinks to cool down this processor. To the best of the author&rsquo / s knowledge, this study contributes to the literature in that, as opposed to the available analytical microchannel optimization studies considering constant thermophysical properties at the fluid inlet temperature, the properties are evaluated at the area weighted average of the fluid inlet and iteratively calculated outlet temperatures. Moreover, the effects of the thermal and hydrodynamic entrance regions on heat transfer and flow are also investigated.

A novel complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatible microchannel heat sink is designed, fabricated, and tested for electronic cooling applications. The proposed microchannel heat sink requires no design change of the electronic circuitry underneath. Therefore, microchannels can be fabricated on top of the finished CMOS wafers by just adding a few more steps to the fabrication flow. Combining polymer (parylene C) and metal (copper) structures, a high performance microchannel heat sink can be easily manufactured on top of the electronic circuits, forming a monolithic cooling system. In the design stage, computer simulations of the microchannels with several different dimensions have been performed. Microchannels made of only parylene showed poor heat transfer performance as expected since the thermal conductivity of parylene C is very low. Therefore an alternative design comprising structural parylene layer and embedded metal layers has been modeled. Copper is selected as the metal due to its simple fabrication and very good thermal properties. The results showed that the higher the copper surface area the better the thermal performance of the heat sinks. Based on the modeling results, the final test structures are designed with full copper sidewalls with a parylene top wall. Several different microchannel test chips have been fabricated in METU-MEMS Research &amp / Application Center cleanroom facilities. The devices are tested with different flow rates and heat loads. During the tests, it was shown that the test devices can remove about 126 W/cm2 heat flux from the chip surface while keeping the chip temperature at around 90&deg / C with a coolant flow rate of 500 &mu / l/min per channel.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde die heterogen katalysierte Oxidation von Ethen zu Ethylenoxid an Silberkatalysatoren untersucht. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, Mikrostrukturreaktoren für schnelle und stark exotherme Oxidationsreaktionen zu erproben und diese Epoxidation diente als Modellreaktion. Gleichzeitig wurden explosions- und flammhemmende Eigenschaften des Mikrostrukturreaktors ausgenutzt, um die partielle Oxidation von Ethen zu Ethyenoxid im Explosionsbereich (> 9% Sauerstoff) ohne Sicherheitsprobleme zu ermöglichen. Um die gesteckten Ziele zu erreichen wurden zwei parallele Lösungswege beschritten. Zunächst wurden modulare Mikrostrukturreaktoren und geeignete mikrostrukturierte Katalysatorträger entwickelt, um Untersuchungen verschiedener katalytischer Beschichtungen in dieser neuen und nicht allgemein verfügbaren Reaktorbauweise zu ermöglichen. Zur katalytische Erprobungen dieser Konstruktion war es notwendig, geeignete Beschichtungstechniken zur Immobilisierung katalytisch aktiver Spezies zu entwickeln. Durch die Bauweise dieser Reaktoren als Wandreaktor erschien es anfänglich nicht möglich, kommerziell verfügbare pellet-artige Katalysatoren zu verwenden. Daher wurden, parallel zur Konstruktion der modularen Mikroreaktoren, verschiedene auf Silber basierende Beschichtungstechniken hinsichtlich ihrer Eignung für diese Reaktion erprobt. Zur Erprobung kamen u.a. Silberimmobilisierung in einem durch anodischen Oxidation erzeugen Porensystem bzw. einer durch Sol-Gel Beschichtung erzeugten a-Aluminiumoxid Schicht und die Abscheidung von metallischem Silber per Vakuumbeschichtung auf einem Trägermaterial. Zuletzt wurde die Immobilisierung eines gemahlenen, kommerziellen Katalysators per elektrostatischer Pulverabscheidung auf einem entsprechend präparierten Trägermaterial vorgenommen und erfolgreich erprobt. Die wichtigste Erkenntnis dieser Arbeit aus chemisch-katalytischer Sicht ist der enorm positive Einfluss hoher Sauerstoffkonzentrationen auf die Selektivität und gleichzeitig den Umsatz des umzusetzenden Ethylens. Wird die Sauerstoffkonzentration von unter 10% auf bis zu 80% erhöht, so steigt die Selektivität zu Ethylenoxid um ca. 10% an und simultan kann der Umsatzgrad abhängig vom Katalysator und der Reaktortemperatur um den Faktor 2 bis 10 gesteigert werden. Diese Beobachtung wurde für jeden funktionierenden Katalysator gemacht, unabhängig von dessen Herstellung. Mittels Promotoren wie Cs-Salzen und Stickoxiden konnte die Selektivität in Abwesenheit gängiger Moderatoren wie Chlorkomponenten auf 70% (Cs-Salze) bzw. 75% (NOx) gesteigert werden. Verfahrenstechnisch ist festzuhalten, dass Mikrostrukturreaktoren gleich welcher Bauweise unter allen Reaktionsbedingungen thermisch stabil und beherrschbar blieben. Es wurden Umsatzgrade bis 99% bezüglich Ethen erzielt bzw. Reaktionstemperaturen von über 630 K bei einem binären Ethylen-Sauerstoff Gemisch (20%/80%) angewendet. Angesichts adiabater Temperaturerhöhungen von mehr als 3000 K konnte dennoch ein stabiler Betrieb des Reaktors festgestellt werden. Diese thermische Stabilität war bei Katalysatoren in Festbettreaktoren nicht gegeben.