Research Themes: Materials & surface engineering, Energy and climate change.

In modern architecture, large glass panels are often used as construction material for both commercial buildings and residential houses. The heat which penetrates through these glass panels results in significant energy loss; around 30% of heat transfer and energy loss is through inefficient windows. Thus, there has been increasing demand for improvement in the thermal and optical properties of the windows in order to reduce the amount of energy used in buildings.

Silver nanoprisms embedded in polymeric matrix have recently been demonstrated for effective coatings on windows to absorb the infrared light while still let a sufficient amount of visible light transmit through the glass. However, it is challenging to synthesis such nanoparticles with desired size and shape in a controllable and reproducible format. Using advanced microfluidic technology, we recently synthesised silver nanoprisms a using a flow focusing microreactor, coupled with UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy for real-time monitoring of optical properties of the produced nanoprisms [1,2]. The width and depth of the microchannel of the microreactor are 150μm and 50μm, respectively.

This project aims to scale-up the production of silver nanoprisms through the design, construction and optimisation of a meso-scale flow reactor (in a diameter of about 1mm). Both glass and polymer tubes will be examined while emphasis will be placed on the optimisation of the operational fluidic conditions for product property optimisation. Microscopic visualisation including micro-scale Particle Image Velocimetry (microPIV) will be employed for quantification of flow dynamics and mixing processes. Both spectroscopy and transmission electron microscope (TEM) techniques will be used for nanoparticle characterisation.

[1] Carboni, M., et al., Microfluidics-based continuous flow formation of triangular silver nanoprisms with tunable surface plasmon resonance. Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 1, 7540-7546 (2013).

[2] Zmijan, R., et al., In situ microspectroscopic monitoring within a microfluidic reactor. RSC Advances,4, 14569-14572 (2014).

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Xunli Zhang, Bioengineering research group, Email: XL.Zhang<στο>soton.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 5099.