Highly efficient passive Tesla valves for microfluidic applications. - In: Microsystems & nanoengineering, ISSN 2055-7434, Bd. 8 (2022), 1, 97, S. 1-12
A multistage optimization method is developed yielding Tesla valves that are efficient even at low flow rates, characteristic, e.g., for almost all microfluidic systems, where passive valves have intrinsic advantages over active ones. We report on optimized structures that show a diodicity of up to 1.8 already at flow rates of 20 μl s^-1 corresponding to a Reynolds number of 36. Centerpiece of the design is a topological optimization based on the finite element method. It is set-up to yield easy-to-fabricate valve structures with a small footprint that can be directly used in microfluidic systems. Our numerical two-dimensional optimization takes into account the finite height of the channel approximately by means of a so-called shallow-channel approximation. Based on the three-dimensionally extruded optimized designs, various test structures were fabricated using standard, widely available microsystem manufacturing techniques. The manufacturing process is described in detail since it can be used for the production of similar cost-effective microfluidic systems. For the experimentally fabricated chips, the efficiency of the different valve designs, i.e., the diodicity defined as the ratio of the measured pressure drops in backward and forward flow directions, respectively, is measured and compared to theoretical predictions obtained from full 3D calculations of the Tesla valves. Good agreement is found. In addition to the direct measurement of the diodicities, the flow profiles in the fabricated test structures are determined using a two-dimensional microscopic particle image velocimetry (μPIV) method. Again, a reasonable good agreement of the measured flow profiles with simulated predictions is observed.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-022-00437-4
Reconstructions of the As-terminated GaAs(001) surface exposed to atomic hydrogen. - In: ACS omega, ISSN 2470-1343, Bd. 7 (2022), 6, S. 5064-5068
We explore the atomic structures and electronic properties of the As-terminated GaAs(001) surface in the presence of hydrogen based on ab initio density functional theory. We calculate a phase diagram dependent on the chemical potentials of As and H, showing which surface reconstruction is the most stable for a given set of chemical potentials. The findings are supported by the calculation of energy landscapes of the surfaces, which indicate possible H bonding sites as well as the density of states, which show the effect of hydrogen adsorption on the states near the fundamental band gap.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.1c06019
Physik-geführte NARXnets (PGNARXnets) zur Zeitreihenvorhersage. - In: Proceedings 31. Workshop Computational Intelligence, (2021), S. 235-261
Optical properties of nanoporous gold sponges using model structures obtained from three-dimensional phase-field Simulation. - In: 2021 Photonics & Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS), (2021), S. 517-523
Nanoporous sponge structures show fascinating optical properties related to a strong spatial localization of field modes and a resulting strong field enhancement. In this work, a novel efficient method for the generation of three-dimensional nanoporous sponge structures using time-resolved phase-field simulations is presented. The algorithm for creating the geometries and the underlying equations are discussed. Different sponge geometries are generated and compared with sponges that have been experimentally measured using FIB tomography. Meaningful parameters are defined for the comparison of the geometric properties of the random sponge structures. In addition, the optical properties of the simulated sponges are compared with the experimentally measured sponges. It is shown that a description using effective media does not provide a good agreement to the actual spectra. This shows that the optical properties are largely determined by the local structures. In contrast, the numerically obtained spectra of the phase-field sponge models accounting for the real-space structure show excellent agreement with the spectra of the experimentally measured sponges.
https://doi.org/10.1109/PIERS53385.2021.9694971
Wafer-level fabrication of an EWOD-driven micropump. - In: MikroSystemTechnik, (2021), S. 574-577
Dimensioning and characterisation of an EWOD-driven chipintegrated micropump using time-resolved simulations. - In: MikroSystemTechnik, (2021), S. 531-534
Simulation model and dimensioning of a photoacoustic sensor for the detection of radiation-induced pressure surges. - In: MikroSystemTechnik, (2021), S. 523-526
Uphill and downhill charge generation from charge transfer to charge separated states in organic solar cells. - In: Journal of materials chemistry, ISSN 2050-7534, Bd. 9 (2021), 40, S. 14463-14489
It is common knowledge that molecular energy level offsets of a type II heterojunction formed at the donor-acceptor interface are considered to be the driving force for photoinduced charge transfer in organic solar cells. Usually, these offsets - present between molecular energy levels of the donor and acceptor - are obtained via cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurements of organic semiconductors cast in a film or dissolved in solution. Simply transferring such determined energy levels from solution or film of single materials to blend films may be obviously limited and not be possible in full generality. Herein, we report various cases of material combinations in which novel non-fullerene acceptors did not yield successful charge transfer, although energy levels obtained by CV on constituting single materials indicate a type II heterojunction. Whilst the integer charge transfer (ICT) model provides one explanation for a relative rise of molecular energy levels of acceptors, further details and other cases have not been studied so far in great detail. By applying energy-resolved electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (ER-EIS) on several donor-acceptor combinations, a Fano-like resonance feature associated with a distinctive molecular energy level of the acceptor as well as various relative molecular energy level shifts of different kinds could be observed. By analyzing ER-EIS and absorption spectra, not only the exciton binding energy within single materials could be determined, but also the commonly unknown binding energy of the CT state with regard to the joint density of states (jDOS) of the effective semiconductor. The latter is defined by transitions between the highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMO) of the donor and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (LUMO) of the acceptor. Using this technique among others, we identified cases in which charge generation may occur either via uphill or by downhill processes between the charge transfer exciton and the electronic gap of the effective semiconductor. Exceptionally high CT-exciton binding energies and thus low charge generation yields were obtained for a case in which the donor and acceptor yielded a too intimate blend morphology, indicating π-π stacking as a potential cause for unfavorable molecular energy level alignment.
https://doi.org/10.1039/D1TC02351A
InP and AlInP(001)(2 × 4) surface oxidation from density functional theory. - In: ACS omega, ISSN 2470-1343, Bd. 6 (2021), 9, S. 6297-6304
The atomic structure and electronic properties of the InP and Al0.5In0.5P(001) surfaces at the initial stages of oxidation are investigated via density functional theory. Thereby, we focus on the mixed-dimer (2 × 4) surfaces stable for cation-rich preparation conditions. For InP, the top In-P dimer is the most favored adsorption site, while it is the second-layer Al-Al dimer for AlInP. The energetically favored adsorption sites yield group III-O bond-related states in the energy region of the bulk band gap, which may act as recombination centers. Consistently, the In p state density around the conduction edge is found to be reduced upon oxidation.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.0c06019
Programmable multiple plasmonic resonances of nanoparticle superlattice for enhancing photoelectrochemical activity. - In: Advanced functional materials, ISSN 1616-3028, Bd. 30 (2020), 48, 2005170, insges. 10 S.
https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202005170