(90f) A New Interdisciplinary Engineering Course – “Nanoscale Transport Phenomena for Manufacturing Nanodevices”

Herein we will introduce a new interdisciplinary engineering course - "Nanoscale Transport Phenomena for Manufacturing Nanodevices", which was recently developed in the Francis College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The course focuses on the principles of nanoscale transport phenomena needed for manufacturing nanodevices and aims to close a large gap between nanoscience and commercial production of nanotechnology products. The course also helps to integrate the interdisciplinary knowledge required for designing and manufacturing nanodevices into undergraduate curricula. To meet these unique needs and challenges, five faculty from three engineering departments (Chemical, Mechanical and Plastics Engineering) have created this interdisciplinary course which was offered for the first time as an elective to seniors in the College of Engineering during the 2011 fall semester. The course was presented through lectures, hands-on laboratory exercises, demonstration experiments, and a final design project. In this presentation, we will discuss the lecture topics and eight hands-on laboratory experiments that were developed into modules to complement lectures in fluid mechanics, heat transfer, mixing, reaction engineering, electroosmosis, electophoresis, and manufacturing methods for micro and nanoscale devices. We will also show the final project designs for the nanodevices that were finished by student teams at the end of the course. Finally, we will show the assessment results from the pre-post student surveys as well as faculty interviews. This new interdisciplinary course will better prepare undergraduates for employment focused on designing and manufacturing nano/microfluidic systems, lab-on-a-chip devices, electronics devices, medical devices, and other emerging technologies. The impact of this senior-level course will significantly enhance the “Nanomaterials Engineering Option” in the Chemical Engineering Department undergraduate curriculum as well as the medical device industry focus in the Plastics Engineering Department, and can be used in the accelerated BS-MS program which is popular in the College of Engineering. The course will be available to the chemical, mechanical, and plastics engineering seniors each year. Our lab modules can also be exported to freshman introductory engineering courses in the College of Engineering. In addition, the microscale fluid mechanics and heat transfer experiments may be incorporated into the undergraduate chemical engineering Unit Operations Laboratory courses.