Dr. Jerry Wei-Jen Shan from Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Rutgers – the State University of New Jersey paid a visit to TIPCCAS on May 25, 2010 and gave a lecture entitled "Manipulation of Carbon Nanotubes in Liquid Suspension with Electric Fields and Shear Flow".

In his lecture, Dr. Shan reviewed the basic physics of the interaction of carbon nanotubes with external electromagnetic fields, and briefly introduced his work on developing “smart” fluids having actively controllable thermal conductivities and apparent viscosities, as well as nanocomposite membranes containing aligned carbon nanotubes.  Then he discussed in more detail about the nanoscale hydrodynamics and electromechanics of single-wall carbon nanotubes under simultaneous shear flow and electric fields. After that he described his team’s experimental results on the flow resistance of individual SWNTs forced to rotate in a quiescent fluid, as well as the particle orientation of single-wall nanotubes under combined shear and electric fields, making comparison with classical continuum theory. At the end, he gave a brief discussion of the possibility of electromagnetic-field-controlled carbon nanotubes for hyperthermia, drug delivery, and the assembly of nanoelectronics.

Dr. Shan received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology. He is now an associate professor with the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers – the State University of New Jersey. His general research interests lie in the areas of fluid mechanics of microstructure suspension, macroscopic rheology and thermal conductivity, etc.