Particle self-organization is ubiquitous in both industrial and natural processes, however our understanding of the resulting complexity is limited. Our laboratory focuses on particle transport by tuning the particle-particle, particle-fluid, and particle-field interactions to understand the underlying phenomena that couple global transport and local self-organization to create novel processes and devices. We are currently probing these phenomena across nine orders of magnitude in scale, ranging from nanoparticle self-assembly to granular flows in industrial processes.
New: see interesting other research images/movies here
Nanoscale:
Anisotropic composites using nanoparticle dielectrophoresis
Microsphere-nanoparticle phase behavior and structure
Microscale:
Suspension flow: particle migration vs. chaos
Deposition of microlens arrays
Macroscale:
Flow in a model high-shear granulator
Competition between mixing and segregation in a sphere
Short movie here (more to be added soon)
Chaotic mixing and segregation in a cube (published in JFG's thesis, 2003)
See the Ottino group for follow up work to this research on 2D and two-axis 3D flows.
Facilities:
Click here to see our resources including our high-speed confocal microscope