A New Interdisciplinary Engineering Course on Nanoscale Transport Phenomena

A new interdisciplinary engineering course, “Nanoscale Transport Phenomena for Manufacturing Nanodevices”, was recently developed. The course focuses on the principles of nanoscale transport phenomena needed for manufacturing nanodevices and aims to close a large gap between nanoscience and commercial production of nanotechnology products. The course also helps to integrate the interdisciplinary knowledge required for designing and manufacturing nanodevices into undergraduate curricula. To meet these unique needs and challenges, five instructors from three engineering departments (Chemical, Mechanical, and Plastics Engineering) have created this interdisciplinary course. The course was offered for the first time as an elective to seniors during the 2011 fall semester and again in the 2012 fall semester. The course for students in the three engineering departments included lectures, hands-on laboratory exercises, demonstration experiments, and a final design project. In this paper, we discuss the lecture topics and eight hands-on laboratory experiments that were developed into modules to complement lectures in fluid mechanics, heat transfer, mixing, reaction engineering, electroosmosis, electophoresis, and manufacturing methods for micro and nanoscale devices. We also show the final project designs for the nanodevices or nanosystems that were proposed by student teams at the end of the course. Finally, we present the assessment results from the prepost student surveys as well as faculty interviews. This new interdisciplinary course will better prepare undergraduates for employment focused on designing and manufacturing nano/microfluidic systems, lab-on-a-chip devices, electronic devices, medical devices, and other micro and nano scale emerging technologies. The impact of this senior-level course will significantly enhance the “Nanomaterials Engineering Option” in the Chemical Engineering Department undergraduate curriculum as well as the medical device industry focus in the Plastics Engineering Department. It also can be used in the popular accelerated BS-MS program in the College of Engineering. The course will be available to the chemical, mechanical, and plastics engineering seniors each year. The lab modules can be exported to freshman introductory engineering courses in the College of Engineering. In addition, the microscale fluid mechanics and heat transfer experiments may be incorporated into the undergraduate chemical engineering Unit Operations Laboratory courses.