News

Dr. Damena Agonafer received a five-year $500,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to identify different modes of heat transfer during the evaporation process of nonsymmetrical microdroplets that sit atop micropillar structures on a cooling platform. We would like to congratulate our PI, Dr. Agonafer, on this great achievement. On the news

The Electronics and Photonics Packaging Division (EPPD) 2019 Early Career Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) was awarded to our principal investigator Dr. Damena Agonafer. The award, given to professionals within 10 years of last degree received, recognizes a young engineer with significant technical achievements in his or her career in electronic

The cover of the journal Langmuir, the ACS journal of fundamental interface science, featured our latest work on the droplets of different liquids on micropillar structures of different shapes: triangles, squares, and circles. The paper titled “Evolution of Microdroplet Morphology Confined on Asymmetric Micropillar Structures” presents the study on the retention of microdroplets with high and low

The paper titled Experimental investigation of evaporation from asymmetric microdroplets confined on heated micropillar structures got published on Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science. This paper examines the evaporation rate and heat transfer performance of continuously–fed water microdroplets confined on heated silicon micropillar structures with circular, square, and triangular cross-sections. Our experimental results show that increasing levels of droplet asymmetry significantly

The paper titled Investigation of the confinement effect on the evaporation behavior of a droplet pinned on a micropillar structure, which focused on the study of the diffusion confinement effect imposed by the bottom substrate and the sidewall of the micropillar through numerical simulations and experimental investigations got published on Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. The simulation

In scaling computer performance, closely integrating heterogeneous components in a single system-inpackage assembly provides faster signal communication and a tighter footprint – but also generates more heat: state-of-the art microelectronic devices can produce more than 1 kW square-cm. The next generation high-powered electronics will need two-phase liquid cooling, such as droplet evaporation, which utilizes the

Poster presentation at 2019 Gordon Research Seminar/Conference on Micro and Nanoscale Phase Change Heat Transfer.

The NSF grant will go to the nanoscale energy and interfacial transport research based mentoring program to increase underrepresented minority students in STEM. This program explores how to motivate students from the Saint Louis area, and in particular underrepresented minorities, to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. A series of integrated

The $86,419 grant from Google Inc. will be used for research on creating better cooling strategy for data center infrastructure. Within one year, we aim to develop micropillar arrays, which ultimately will measure 1 to 5 microns in diameter with optimal shapes to promote evaporative cooling. For more information click here.

Dr. Damena Agonafer is invited to give a seminar talk at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Agonafer will present a talk titled “Evaporation from Asymmetric Microdroplets”.