Alina Alexeenko will be the speaker this week at the BNC Faculty D+ Seminar Series. This will occur at noon on Thursday April 26. In BRK 2001. Panera will be served for lunch. “Micro/Nanotechnology for Rocket Science” The performance of conventional fluidic devices such as pumps, combustors and heat engines decreases at the microscale due to greater viscous and heat transfer losses. However, the close coupling between non-equilibrium gas, liquid and solid-state transport and electromagnetic phenomena enables unconventional micro/nanodevices. We consider three distinct examples of MEMS with non-equilibrium gas-phase transport based on i) very large thermal gradients; ii) increased capillary forces; iii) high electric fields. One examples is Film Evaporation MEMS Tunable Array (FEMTA), a micropropulsion technology that exploits microscale effects of surface tension, hydrophobicity, and thin film boiling to create highly tunable thrust using pure water as propellant for attitude control and maneuvering of smallsats and deployable space structures. --- Alina Alexeenko Professor, School of Aero & Astronautics Purdue University (765) 496-1864 alexeenk@purdue.edu<mailto:alexeenk@purdue.edu>