MIT Department: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Undergraduate Institution: Florida International University
Faculty Mentor: Evelyn Wang
Research Supervisor: Dan Preston, Kyle Wilke
Website: LinkedIn
Biography
I was born in Havana, Cuba. I am majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics at Florida International University. Throughout my extracurricular work at my school, I have been drawn towards robotics and artificial intelligence research. Ideally, my Ph.D. would be based on the latter subject. Beyond my academics, when I have time I enjoy gardening, hiking with friends, gaming, and participating in hackathons.
2017 Poster Presentation
2017 Research Abstract
Fabrication of doubly re-entrant structures using a more affordable method
Manuel Garcia, Department of Computer Science, Florida International University
Kyle Wilke, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daniel J. Preston, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Evelyn Wang, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The contact angle ( θ ) of a liquid on a surface determines its wetting properties. The bigger the intrinsic contact angle ( θ > 90◦), the more the liquid gets repelled, and the smaller ( θ < 90◦ ) the more it spreads on the surface (wets). The presence of micro and nano structures in surfaces in a precise arrange result in repellency for low contact angle liquids, allowing a pouch of air beneath the liquid (Cassie-Baxter state). The state-of-the-art fabrication processes of doubly reentrant structures are quite complicated to perform and restricted to a few materials. In this work, we proposed a simpler fabrication method of doubly reentrant structures on a larger variety of materials while maintaining similar wetting properties. Our method uses reentrant mushroom- like microstructures (a pillar with a circular plate on top) as the starting point since these are fairly easy to make. Using numerical analysis, we theorized that by applying a thin film with a compressive stress on the top plate of the reentrant structure, we obtain doubly reentrant structures as the result of a concave bending on the top films. Similar results were obtained by applying a compressive film on a tensile top of the reentrant structures. These doubly reentrant structures are expected to show high repellency for low surface tension liquids which can be used in more efficient heat transfer processes, reduction of hydrodynamic drag or Biomimetics applications, just to mention a few. Further experiments on their wetting and structural properties will be tested using sessile drop and impingement methods. This work theorizes a simpler way to obtain doubly reentrant structures with similar properties to the state-of-the-art.