UCD School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering
UCD Centre of Micro/Nano Manufacturing Technology
UCD group of polymer micro/nano manufacturing (polychip-UCD)
not because they are easy, but because they are hard
Welcome to Nan's Research Group
Team overview
Dr. Nan Zhang's group on Polymer Micro/Nano Manufacturing Technologies is located in the UCD School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. We are part of the UCD Center of Micro/Nano Manufacturing Technologies.
Dr Zhang has won more than 4.5Million grant in his early career, including a H2020 MSCA ITN Grant as a consortium co-coordinator and UCD PI, PI and Co-PI of projects from Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland-Commercialization Funding, Irish Research Council etc.
Our research
Dr Zhang's group focuses on the following research areas:
1) Polymer micro/nano manufacturing: we work on the fundamental understanding of key polymer microfabrication processes, including micro injection moulding, micro hot embossing/nanoimprinting, and digital light processing, for the fabrication of surface micro/nano structures for applications of medical devices and functional surfaces.
2) Manufacturing of plastic microfluidic chips: our team is highly specialized in the design, prototyping, scale-up production, and instrumentation of plastic microfluidic devices with the development of a series of key technologies including high-performance nanocomposite mould, high precision bonding and scalable surface treatment technologies.
3) Microfluidics for drug synthesis and diagnostics: we work on nanoparticle formulation and optimization platforms for gene/cell therapy, and develop digital platforms for molecular diagnostics.
4) Atomic and Close-to-atomic scale manufacturing: we work on 2D materials' atomic-scale patterning and integration and study their structure and properties for future electronic devices and biomedical applications.
Members
Dr Nan Zhang is Assistant Professor at University College Dublin. He is co-coordinator of H2020 MSCA ITN SIMPPER_MedDev and UCD PI, and PI and Co-PI for projects funded by Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland-Commercialization Funding, Irish Research Council etc.
Our team has 2 postdoc research fellows, 10 PhD students, 1 Research Assitant, and several masters and visiting students.
Research facility
After more than 10 years of development, our team is now well-equipped. We have established the microfabrication platform including UV lithography, physical vapour deposition, precision electroforming, micro injection moulding, nanoimprinting, and precision DLP 3D printing.
We have also established application platforms for the synthesis of nanoparticles and digital-LAMP for diagnostics.
Please visit our equipment page for details.
VACANCIES
We highly encourage intelligent students and postdocs to apply for Irish Research Council (IRC) postgraduate and postdoc programmes to study in our group. We are very welcoming to CSC PhD students, visiting scholars and internship students.
1. Postgraduate Scholarship:http://research.ie/funding/goipg/
2. Postdoc fellowship: http://research.ie/funding/
3. Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) PhD studentship
4. Visit scholars and internship students
Contact: nan.zhang@ucd.ie