Research Projects
The necstlab group has interests that span fundamental materials synthesis questions through to structural applications of both hybrid and traditional materials. This includes longstanding projects in MEMS and now bioNEMS/MEMS. While not all-encompassing, much of the group’s work supports the efforts of the NECST Consortium, an aerospace industry-supported research initiative that seeks to develop the underlying understanding to create enhanced-performance advanced composites using nanotechnology. Beyond the NECST Consortium Members, necstlab research is supported by industry, AFOSR, ARO, NASA, NIST, NSF, ONR, and others.
We maintain significant collaborations around the MIT campus, particularly with faculty in the Depts. of Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Chemical Engineering, and MIT labs and centers including the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), Materials Processing Center (MPC), Center for Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE), and the Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL), as well as Harvard’s Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS). Important to the contributions of the necstlab are collaborations with leading research groups from around the world (see below) through formal and informal collaborations.
Example past and current research projects include:
- BioNEMS materials design and implementation in microfluidics
- Buckling mechanics
- Carbon nanostructure synthesis from non-traditional catalysts
- Continuous growth of aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
- Electroactive nanoengineered actuator/sensor architectures focusing on ion transport
- Nanoengineered (hybrid) composite architectures for laminate-level mechanical performance improvement
- Multifunctional properties including damage sensing and detection
- Manufacturing
- Polymer nanocomposite mechanics and electrical and thermal transport
- Si MEMS devices including piezoelectric energy harvesters, microfabricated solid oxide fuel cells, stress characterization, and 3D MEMS
- VACNT characterization and physical properties
Collaborators
In addition to numerous MIT-based collaborations and industry collaborators, the necstlab group has collaborations with several leading academic group's from around the world:
Prof. Dhimiter Bello, Work Environment, Nanomanufacturing Center for Excellence, Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Program, at UMass-Lowell
Dr. Hulya Cebeci* at Istanbul Technical Univ.
Professor Hai M. Duong* at his Nanoengineering Materials Laboratory at the National University of Singapore
Prof. Kenneth Goodson, Stanford Microscale Heat Transfer Laboartory, Stanford Univ.
Dr. Roberto Guzmán de Villoria* at IMDEA Materials Institute, Madrid, Spain
Professor H. Thomas Hahn and the Multifunctional Composites Laboratory at UCLA
Prof. A. John Hart* and his Mechanosynthesis Group at the University of Michigan
Prof. Stephan Hofmann, Depart. of Engineering, University of Cambridge
Dr. Seungbum Hong's Interfacial Materials group from Argonne National Laboratory
Dr. Alex Liddle's group from NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Professors Shigeo Maruyama and Junichiro Shiomi from the Fullerene and Carbon Nanotube and Nano-Therm Laboratory at the Univ. of Tokyo
Professor Dimitrios Papavassiliou and the Computational Transport Processes group at the Univ. of Oklahoma
Prof. Karl Schulte and the Polymer Composites Section, Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH)
Prof. James Seferis and his Polymer Composites Laboratory formerly of the Univ. of Washington
Prof. Mehmet Toner and the BioMEMS Resource Center at Mass. General Hospital and Harvard Univ.
Prof. Daniel Wagner and the Composite Materials Mechanics at the Weizmann Institute of Science
Prof. Qiming Zhang, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University
Prof. Ignace Verpoest, chair of the Leuven Materials Research Centre, Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
*necstlab alumni