Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar

The responsivity of mechanical devices to environmental changes can be enhanced through miniaturisation. This has led to some key advances in nanoscience, which include the imaging of surfaces with atomic and molecular resolution, measurement of inertial mass at the atomic scale and monitoring of biological processes in liquid. In this talk, I will give an overview of work being conducted in our group to explore the effects and utilisation of fluid immersion of these devices. This will include a new modality of NEMS mass spectrometry that intrinsically enables imaging, the unexpected effects of noncontinuum behaviour of gases at nanometre scales, the viscoelastic behaviour of nominally Newtonian liquids and the utilisation of fluid-structure interactions for directed propulsion of nanoparticles.