Her presentation at the 2008 National Nano Engineering Conference will discuss how, for many nanotechnology applications, paramount performance can only be achieved if the nanomaterials are deagglomerated and uniformly dispersed in media such as organic solvents, polymer resins, water, etc. In addition, she will explain how Microfluidics' technologies and processes provide solutions when nanoencapsulation, particle exfoliation, mixing in the nanometer scale, and fibril formation and length reduction of fibers are desired.

Dr. Panagiotou will discuss how the heart of the Microfluidics technology is a continuous microreactor, the interaction chamber, which consists of "fixed geometry" microchannels. Flow through the chamber is characterized by high fluid velocities and subsequent impingement of fluid jets to the chamber walls or to one another. This results in the generation of high intensity shear fields, and energy dissipation mechanisms such as turbulence are activated in the microliter-size volumes of the chamber. Under these conditions, mixing of fluids takes place at the nanometer scale, and solid agglomerates disperse or break to give submicron particles.

Microfluidics high shear fluid processors are used for particle size reduction, deagglomeration and dispersion of nanoparticles in liquid media. The scalability of these processors has been demonstrated in many applications. Dr. Panagiotou will give her presentation on Wednesday, November 12 at 3:45 pm as part of the Nanocomposites Session.