Manufacturing Complex Stuctures In A Single Step - Uncovered By MIT

Yet another unexpected discovery is made in MIT on manufacturing complex structures at a significantly very small sizes down to the nanometer scale. In general, Sintering  is the process of manufacturing the heat sinks by, forming a desired shape from the powdered metals and then heating them in the vacuum to let the particles bind together. Some MIT students sintered the copper particles in the air instead of doing it in vacuum which resulted into a new process for manufacturing some complex structures in a single step.

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Images taken with a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope show the nanowire bristles that form on copper particles of different sizes. Image courtesy of the Varanasi Lab

Kripa Varanasi, d’Arbeloff Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, postdoc Yuehua Cui of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity and two Mechanical Engineering graduate students Christopher Love and J. David Smith were the team of researchers who revealed this process. According to Varanasi, the team expected some solid structure through this unconventional try out and ended up in the formation of particles covered with nano wires with high durability.

Also during their experiment the nanowires, that is the bristles like structure, is grown outward through the process of diffusion imparting a hollowness in the middle of the particles. The team is currently experimenting the same process with several other materials expecting the same result. If they found the same result on some more of the materials then the goodness we could get from them would be something unimaginable. For example, if they got this phenomenon working in zirconium which is now employed in nuclear reactors as cladding for fuel rods, might help in improving heat transfer. This improved heat transfer consequently could effectively improve the overall efficiency of the total power plant. Also, this new method could lead to manufacturing materials for effective cooling system to a wide range of things from microprocessors to power plants, that is a solution for a problem that was waiting to get solved for a very long time.

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