N.N. Sharma

Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani | BITS Pilani · Department of Mechanical Engineering

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to predict a suitable paper substrate which has high capillary pressure with the tendency of subsequent fluid wrenching in onward direction for the fabrication of microfluidics device application. Design/methodology/approach The experiment has been done on the Whatman TM grade 1, Whatman TM chromatography and n...

Wicking or spontaneous absorption into a porous substance are terms used to describe the drag a liquid experiences as a result of the negative capillary pressure that forms at the liquid–air interfaces. This indicates that it happens at the liquid–solid-vapor interfaces. Because the invading liquid wets the surface of the solid particles, changing...

The use of glass micropipettes with conventional actuation techniques intended for fluid ejection for various applications is widespread in the field of biomedical research. The present study provides a procedure for the fabrication of electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) actuated micropipette intended for droplet dispensing. The parameters such as...

The cost-effective rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases is an essential and important factor for curing such diseases in the global public health care picture. Owing to poor infrastructure and lack of sanitation, these diseases have an extreme impact on remote and rural areas, especially in developing countries, and there are unresolved challenge...

In this work, the microchannel structure for microfluidic MEMS device application is designed with finite element method for the levitation of red blood cells as a microparticle using the dielectrophoresis phenomenon. The levitation of targeted cells with vertical manipulation can be utilized for cell isolation. The electric field in the microchann...

The present study develops a fluid–structure Interaction (FSI) model to characterize the physiological loading-induced canalicular fluid motion in an osteocyte network within the bone. The effect of poromechanical properties on the canalicular fluid motion is also studied. The outcomes indicate that fluid motion in the network varies with gait even...

Microfluidics is promising for point of detection in healthcare applications involving silicon-based MEMS technology in combination of materials like PDMS and glasses involving complex fabrication processes. High cost and sensitivity is a major concern for the next stage development of microfluidic devices. Paper based microfluidics is being pursue...

Cortical bone surfaces (periosteal and endosteal) exhibit differential (re)modelling response to mechanical loading. This poses a serious challenge in establishing an in silico model to predict site-specific new bone formation as a function of mechanical stimulus. In this regard, mechanical loading-induced fluid motion in lacunar-canalicular system...

Mechanical loading-induced fluid flow in lacunar–canalicular space (LCS) of bone excites osteocyte cells to release signalling molecules which initiate osteo-activities. Theoretical models considered canaliculi as a uniform and symmetrical space/channel in bone. However, experimental studies reported that canalicular walls are irregular and curvy r...

Traditional rubber industries rely heavily on petroleum-based materials, such as carbon black (CB). The present study aims at mitigating the environmental challenges, through partial replacement of CB, while simultaneously consuming an easily accessible agricultural waste. Accordingly, cellulose nanofibre (CNF) was extracted from wheat-straw using...

Locomotion of bacteria in fluid at small scale is accomplished by cilia and flagella present on its surface. In the present study, existence of cilia on Paramecium surface is mimicked to design scaled-up swimmer rather than utilising its biological function. In the present study, the branches (cilia) on flagella (Paramecium) is employed for designi...

Bone cells namely osteoblasts and osteocytes are assumed responsible for loading-induced osteogenesis. Osteocytes lie within the bone and connect to each other via cell process passing through canalicular spaces which forms a canalicular network. Fluid motion across this network acts as a medium of communication with neighbouring cells. Mechanical...

Multi-walled Carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) have been considered as an ideal reinforcing element to improve the electrical properties of many materials. In this paper, we report the results on synthesis and calculation of electrical resistivity and specific conductivity of copper matrix reinforced with multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Cu/MWCNTs composite...

Recently, there is a great concern in developing integrated microfluidic platforms for biological analysis systems that can perform general biochemistry and biological analysis. Dielectrophoresis, the movement of particles in a non-uniform electric field is widely used to separate viable and non viable cells with good efficiency. The present study...

Efficient manipulation of micro biological cells has always been a very important task in healthcare sector for which a Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) based impedance flow cytometry has been proven to be a promising technique. This technique utilise the advantage of dielectrophoresis (DEP) force which is generated by non-uniform electric fi...

Functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotube (f-MWCNT)-reinforced elastomeric blend nanocomposites were developed through co-coagulation of natural rubber and poly (butadiene rubber) latex blends followed by efficient dispersion of f-MWCNT by using high-speed mechanical perturbation and probe ultrasonication. A systematic variation of f-MWCNT loadin...

Nanoswimmers are of interest among researchers for their utility in propelling nanorobots to specific target for drug delivery, nanosurgery, in vivo biomedical applications such as in treatment of brain tumor and Alzheimer’s disease and similar applications. On-board powering is the major concern for locomotion of nanoswimmer and is being considere...

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) devices have proven to be one of the most promising tools to transport, accumulate and sort various cells and particles. The major challenge in the development of DEP devices is the high cost, low yield using Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). In this paper, we demonstrate a facile, low-cost, and high-throughput method o...

In the past decade, advancement in the field of nanotechnology enables us to create autonomous nano-machine in which nanoswimmer finds an important place. A major challenge to realize nanoswimmer is on-board energy harnessing for locomotion of nanoswimmer in complex surrounding media. In this paper, a design of piezoelectric based energy harnessing...

Dynamics in nano domain is different from that of macro domain. Forces which are considered weak in macro world like Van der Waals, electrostatic interactions, Brownian are seen playing significant role in the motion of particle at nanoscale. The importance of stiffness in Brownian motion for a nanoparticle had been established and published in lit...

Multi-walled Carbon nanotubes–copper (MWCNT/Cu) composite powders with variable MWCNT content were synthesized by modified electro-co-deposition method. The electro-co-deposited MWCNT/Cu powders were consolidated by conventional compaction and sintering process. The consolidated products were then hot rolled and cold drawn to fine wires. The MWCNT/...

The energy harnessing is a process of obtaining energy from the surrounding environment and converting into electrical energy. In the last two decades, there has been a plenteous study in energy harnessing. Now a day, energy harnessing using piezoelectric materials has drawn attention of researchers due to low cost, flexibility and light weight. Th...

There is recently a great interest in developing integrated biological analysis systems that can perform general biochemistry and biological analysis. We present a design for continuous separation structure based on dielectrophoretic forces. The particles with varying electrical properties move continuously to the different location across the chan...

Carbon black can be used as a raw material to synthesize multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). The present study focuses on synthesis of MWCNTs from carbon black using pulsed arc discharge method in Argon atmosphere. The morphological changes during conversion from carbon black to carbon nanotubes by varying arc current and arc application time i...

Controlling the wettability on dielectric materials is a classical topic in surface engineering. Surface texturing and deposition of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are major approaches to achieve lower or higher water contact angle (θc) and thereby making surface less or more wettable (more hydrophobic). Dielectric surfaces wetting has been engin...

In this paper, we have studied the effect of various arc current on synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using carbon black as a raw material by pulsed arc discharge technique which has not been reported in literature. We have traced the phase transformation of Carbon Black for various arc current from 22 to 40A at a constant time interval of 60sec...

The present study investigates the role of temperature in the formation of multiwalled carbon nanotubes from carbon black using arc discharge technique. Carbon black has been used as precursor to synthesize carbon nanotubes in argon atmosphere. The arc current has been varied from 25 to 40 A in order to study the morphological changes in carbon bla...

Carbon nanotube is having poor wet-ability with copper metal. Wet-ability of carbon nanotube was improved by exposing and creating more active sites on the surface of carbon nanotube. Carbon nanotubes were subjected to the prolong ultrasonication treatment of 20×103 Hz and 500W, which helped in disentanglement of carbon nanotube agglomerates and in...

This paper describes the synthesis of nanotube from different grades (Tread * A(non-ASTM), N134,N121,N660 and N330)of carbon black using DC arc discharge method at 40A current for 60sec. Carbon black samples of different grades were procured from industry (Aditya Birla Science and Technology Limited, India). Scanning Electron Micrographs (SEM) of t...

Micro/nano-fluidic MEMS biosensors are the devices that detects the biomolecules. The emerging micro/nano-fluidic devices provide high throughput and high repeatability with very low response time and reduced device cost as compared to traditional devices. This article presents the experimental details for process sequence optimization of digital m...

Treatment of surfaces to change the interaction of fluids with them is a critical step in constructing useful microfluidics devices, especially those used in biological applications. Selective modification of inorganic materials such as Si, SiO2 and Si3N4 is of great interest in research and technology. We evaluated the chemical formation of OTS se...

Flagellar propulsion, observed extensively in nature has been proposed as a means of propelling nanoswimmers. The flagellum propels either through a planar wave or through a helical wave. In the present work, an elastohydrodynamic model of a tapered flagellum propelling through a helical wave with a modified resistive force theory is used to study...

Piezoelectric Materials have played a pivotal role in the progress of Science and Technology since the First World War, being used historically as naturally occurring transducer for precise measurement or to transform energy from one form to the other while currently being used in the MEMS domain for sensing or energy harvesting. Thus this paper re...

In published literature, it is widely reported that the plasma treatment and funtionalization with Octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) self-assembled monolayer (SAM) can individually alter the wetting properties of SU8 surface. A combination of the two approaches gives better results and the synergism of the two approaches produces a superhydrophobic SU...

Textured silicon (Si) substrate were prepared using various texturing methods both chemical and physical and their water contact angle, surface topography and Raman spectra were studied and investigated. The effect of plasma and chemical treatment on micro/nanostructure and roughness of the surface with and without deposition of Octadecyltrichloros...

In recent years, various microfluidic devices and integrated micro fluidic systems such as bio-chips, lab-on-a-chip and microreactors have been the focus of intensive investigations. They are being increasingly applied for bio-medical processes such as genetic analysis, disease diagnosis, chemical synthesis etc. In such devices, rapid and effective...

Separation of biological cells from the mixture has been studied over a period of time in medicine and basic environmental research. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is one among the portable techniques to separate the cells with minimum requirements such as electric field and effective medium. With the advent of BioMEMS, the understanding of dielectric cha...

Locomotion at micro and nano scales is a challenge and has drawn attention for over six decades. Inspired by nature, studies have mimicked nanoswimming organisms, which use rotating or beating flagella for locomotion. This mode of propulsion, also known as flagellar propulsion, has been explored extensively in the literature. However, chemical and...

There is recently a great interest in developing integrated biological analysis systems that can perform general biochemistry and biological analysis. We present a novel continuous separation structure based on dielectrophoresis. The particles with different properties move continuously to the different location across the channel as they flow, due...

Superhydrophobic surfaces of silicon and a few dielectric materials were prepared by a combination of texturing and deposition of a self-assembled monolayer. The water contact angle and surface morphology of the prepared surfaces were investigated for a number of variations during the process of texturing. The combination of surface roughness and c...

This paper presents design and fabrication of a MEMS thermal actuator using SOI technology. The thermal actuators are used in, micro grippers, micro mirror and switching applications by applying voltage on different contact pads, causing beams with pseudo bimorph characteristics heated, thereby the microactuator can produce lateral motion in plane...

Flagellar propulsion is observed extensively in nature and has been proposed as a method of propelling nanoswimmers, which may possess a tremendous potential in medical applications. Mathematical models of the flagellated nanoswimmers show dependence of motion on multiple parameters like geometry and material of flagella, viscosity of the surroundi...

Carbon nanotube-reinforced copper composite powder was prepared by a modified electro-co-deposition method that was carried out on small diameter (3 mm) tip of the cathode. The deposition was done at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Samples were prepared under constant stirring by a magnetic stirrer. Transmission and scanning electron mic...

Bio-MEMS devices are applicable for diagnosis, prosthesis, drug delivery, and many other bio-related applications. Development of bio-MEMS devices require a range of materials that include inorganic materials such as metals, ceramics, glasses, and organic materials like natural and synthetic polymers. One of the widely used polymers is hydrogel, so...

In this paper, we propose to design, simulate and fabricate a novel device design that would be capable of removing heavy metal ions like Lead or Arsenic from the Blood serum. The basic design of the device comprises of micro-needles at the inlet and the outlet, followed by a micro-channel where is blood is made to flow through a series of alternat...

Localized drug delivery and nano manipulation in fluid media like blood is an important application in biomedicine. Nanoswimmers are potential drug delivery agents for inter-vascular and intra-cellular systems. The bio-mimic modeling of flagellar propulsion mechanism of nanoswimmers has been widely attempted in literature. Mathematical models of th...

Superhydrophobicity in nature is the result of multiscale (hierarchical) roughness which consists of nano-asperities superimposed on micrometer scale roughness. A low-cost superhydrophobic surface was prepared by depositing soot on Vaseline coated glass substrates. The surface was rapidly prepared without any sophisticated fabrication facilities. T...

Nanoswimmers are important because of their potential use for the purpose of drug delivery, monitoring, and diagnostics for in vivo biomedical application. They mimic microorganisms and mostly modeled as propelled by beating or rotating flagella. In the vast literature available on modeling of flagellar propulsion, the flagellum is considered const...

Electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) based droplet actuation in microfluidic chip is designed and fabricated. EWOD is used as on-chip micro-pumping scheme for moving fluid digitally in Lab-on-a-chip devices. For enabling this scheme, stacked deposition of thin dielectric and hydrophobic layer in that order between microchannel and electrodes is done...

Introduction: Advancement in the field of Nanorobotics has been facilitated by the current advances in Nano-bio-technology and nanofabrication techniques [1]. Nanorobots are used in the advancement of medical technology, healthcare and environment monitoring and swim in biological fluids flowing in narrow channels of a few hundred nanometers in the...

Swimming in micro/nano domains is a challenge and involves a departure from standard methods of propulsion, which are effective at macrodomains. Flagella based propulsion is seen extensively in nature and has been proposed as a means of propelling nanorobots. Natural flagella actively consume energy in order to generate bending moments that sustain...

The present work investigates the effect of variation of length of electrode for a EWOD (electrowetting on dielectric) based microfluidic flow. The discussed model takes into account the effect of energy gradient on droplet movement. The voltage and pitch length are kept constant at 60 V and 200μm respectively. The parameter measured is the velocit...

Nanorobots are propitious to swim or fly compared with crawling and walking because of issues with desirable characteristics of high velocity, efficiency, specificity, controllability, and a simple propagation mechanism that can be realized with miniaturized parts. Inspired by the fact that microorganisms existing in nature function expeditiously u...

Nanotechnology is an emerging area with very useful applications in medicine. Study of flagellar propulsion in microorganisms gives us an idea of how to design swimming nanorobots. Resistive force theory gives good results for small amplitudes of bending waves. Resistive force theory based modeling of swimming nanorobots with small amplitude and an...

In the present work the thrust force obtained from the unzipping of a dsDNA has been calculated. Utilizing the force hysteresis pattern obtained during unzipping and rezipping of a dsDNA and the calculated thrust force, a feasible DNA based hybrid bio-mechanical actuator model has been proposed which is considered for usage for locomotion of nanoro...

Advancement in the field of nanorobotics has been facilitated by the current advances in nano-bio-technology and nanofabrication methods. The important uses of nanorobots are in advancing medical technology, healthcare and environment monitoring. In bio-medical applications, nanorobots need to swim in biological fluids flowing in narrow channels of...

The present work deals with the investigation of the hybrid bio-mechanical mechanism for nanorobotic propulsion. The thrust force has been obtained from the unzipping of a dsDNA and utilising the force hysteresis pattern obtained during unzipping and rezipping of a dsDNA. The feasible DNA based hybrid bio-mechanical actuator model which is consider...

Emissive power per unit area of a blackbody has been modeled as a function of frequency using quantum electrodynamics, semi-classical and classical approaches in the available literature. Present work extends the classical lumped-parameter systems model of Brownian motion of nanoparticle to abstract an emissive power per unit area model for nanopar...

Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots of the size of few hundred nanometres and below consisting of components of nanoscale or molecular size. There is an all around development in nanotechnology towards realization of nanorobots in the last two decades. In the present work, the compilation of advancement in nanotechnology i...

With quantum computing, we are witnessing an exciting and very promising merging of three of the deepest and most successful scientific and technological developments of modern era: quantum physics, computer science, and nanotechnology. Quantum computers have the potential to perform certain calculations billions of times faster than any silicon-ba...

The variance models for Brownian motion are developed either using the diffusion equation method or by using spectral analysis with a Langevin equation. The diffusion method approach does not consider properties of matter like inertia, elasticity, and dissipative capabilities whereas in the Langevin equation approach, although based on the property...

Among researchers, there is agreement on size dependency of properties of structural elements. For example, effective stiffness property of nanosized structural element differs from those predicted by standard continuum mechanics. This work obtains a relationship among some of these properties. A stochastic motion analysis of nano-elements under th...

Nanomachines such as nanorobots working either in vacuum or in a fluid as mobile machines themselves become the size of the order of the Brownian particle, a nanoparticle free floating in the fluid. For nanomachines working in fluids, the thermal agitation around the machine influences its movement to a greater degree. The nanomachine itself is mod...