Broadening Participation through a Workshop on Nanoengineered Surfaces for Thermal Energy Transport

相变换热在海水淡化、太阳能蓄热、电化学储能、电子冷却等工业过程中有着广泛的应用前景。在过去的几十年里，纳米科学在开发新型工程表面以提高相变换热过程的热力学效率方面发挥了至关重要的作用。虽然纳米工程表面已经成为能量储存的关键技术，但纳米科学教育是新的，相对不发达。因此，重要的是开发新的和有效的方法向学生传授纳米科学的概念，以继续推进纳米技术的进步。该项目试图通过探索工程表面的润湿性、特性和对多相体系的影响的概念来解决这些问题。通过工作坊的形式，K-12的学生将学习纳米工程表面和多相传热的概念。在工作坊期间，学生还将参加研讨会和实验室参观，并进行实验室实验。其目的是激励学生在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)领域追求教育和职业，并传达表面工程在解决未来问题中的重要性。该项目的一个预期结果是提高人们对芯片开发中新的蒸发冷却技术的认识，以及随着人们继续制造服务器或电力电子设备等系统而面临的相应冷却挑战。该项目团队将与华盛顿大学的当地外展项目合作，包括学术管道项目，以招募经济资源较少的学生参加研讨会。这一讲习班的重点是通过让代表性不足的少数群体和妇女接触纳米技术跨学科领域，解决在STEM领域扩大参与的问题。研讨会的另一个成果是为教师创建了一个课堂模块，用于通过实验证明纳米工程表面在热传输方面的重要性。此外，该项目将与学校伙伴研究所(ISP)合作，这是华盛顿大学在K-12教育界从战略上改善教学和学习的标志性努力，以开发和提供课堂模块。

Phase change heat transfer is desirable in many industrial processes including water desalination, solar thermal energy storage, electrochemical energy storage, and electronics cooling. Over the last several decades, nanoscience has played a crucial role in the development of novel engineered surfaces for improving the thermodynamic efficiency of phase change heat transfer processes. While nanoengineered surfaces has become a critical technology for energy storage, nanoscience education is new and relatively underdeveloped. It is therefore important to develop novel and effective methods for teaching the concepts of nanoscience to students to continue the advancement of nanotechnology. The project seeks to address these issues with exploring the concepts of wettability characteristics of engineered surfaces and effects on multiphase systems. Through a workshop format, K-12 students will learn about the concepts of nanoengineered surfaces and multi-phase heat transfer. During the workshop, students will also participate in seminars and laboratory tours and conduct laboratory experiments. The goal is to inspire the students to pursue education and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields as well as convey the importance of surface engineering in solving future problems. An anticipated outcome of the project is to increase the awareness of novel evaporative cooling technology in development of chips and corresponding cooling challenges as one proceeds to make systems such as servers or power electronics devices. The project team will work with local outreach programs from Washington University including the Academic Pipeline programs to recruit students with few financial resources to participate in the workshop. The focus of this workshop is to address broadening participation in STEM fields by exposing underrepresented minorities and women to the interdisciplinary field of nanotechnology. An additional outcome of the workshop is the creation of a classroom module for teachers to use to experimentally demonstrate the importance of nanoengineered surfaces on thermal transport. Further, the project will collaborate with the Institute for School Partnership (ISP), is Washington University's signature effort to improve teaching and learning strategically within the K-12 education community, to develop and deliver the classroom module.