Akshay Kale's Talk

Oct 21, 2015 - 09:30

Oct 21, 2015 - 10:30

Skype seminar in HOD conference room Chemical Engineering Department

Seminars

Dr. Akshay Kale PhD Clemson University South Carolina USA

Abstract: This research seminar highlights the research experience of the author while pursuing graduate studies and largely covers the author’s PhD research on Joule heating effects in insulator-based dielectrophoresis microdevices. The seminar will also include a very brief overview of a few studies on electrokinetic instability and magnetophoretic effects in microfluidic devices which are co-advised by the author during PhD studies. The presentation will be concluded by the proposed post-doctoral work at IIT Bombay. An introduction to the PhD research is provided below. Lab on a chip (LoC) systems have been extensively applied for manipulation detection and analysis of samples in various fields like medical diagnostics biotechnology chemistry environmental monitoring food technology and water quality control. Dielectrophoresis the motion of a polarizable species induced by electric field gradients is a highly selective label-free electrokinetic method extensively used to achieve a controlled manipulation of samples. Specifically insulator-based dielectrophoresis has been exploited for manipulating species more over the other dielectrophoretic methods due to its simpler and cheaper fabrication and absence of electrode fouling in the vicinity of the region of sample manipulation. However the stronger electric fields required in this method make the concerned microdevices highly susceptible to Joule heating which inevitably exists in all electrokinetic methods. Joule heating has been extensively demonstrated to induce non-uniformities in temperature dependent fluid properties and adversely affect the sample manipulation in capillary electrophoresis and electrode based dielectrophoretic microdevices. In addition the permittivity gradients induced by heating have also been extensively shown to induce electrothermal flows in electrode based dielectrophoretic microdevices. However very little attention has been given to the Joule heating effects in insulator based dielectrophoresis microdevices despite the necessity of considering the same being critical while designing LoC systems employing this mechanism. In addition the previously reported literature on the numerical simulations of these effects has been two dimensional. Since the temperature field induced by Joule heating extends beyond the fluid domain into the microfluidic substrates three dimensional simulations are expected to provide a more accurate interpretation of the joule heating effects. This research expands the studies on Joule heating effects in insulator-based dielectrophoresis microdevices. Experimental studies and a qualitative theoretical analysis have been provided to understand the exact role of Joule heating in influencing the mechanism of insulator based dielectrophoresis. The numerical analysis involved in the work studies a coupled transport of charge mass momentum and energy and is based on a full scale three dimensional transient simulation of the entire microdevice in COMSOL Multiphysics which has been developed by the author for the first time in this field. These fundamental studies are expected to provide guidelines for more realistic designs of LoC systems employing insulator-based dielectrophoresis.Brief bio: Dr. Akshay Kale hails from Mumbai India and later completed his basic education in Pune India. He earned a B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from College of Engineering Pune (COEP) in 2011. He later joined Clemson University one of the top 20 public research universities in USA to pursue a PhD in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Thermal and Fluid systems. He graduated from Clemson University in August 2015 with a training in fundamental research on fluid flow heat transfer and mass transfer in microfluidic devices. He has always cherished a strong desire of applying his research to develop technology for the betterment of the Indian community and views this post-doctoral opportunity as a promising platform for the same. When not doing research he pursues his other interests such as cooking photography music wildlife exploration and Vedic astrology.