LAWS Webinar 4

Short Early Career Talk (10 Minutes)

Advancing Cell Analysis: Leveraging Opto-Acoustofluidic Systems for Bioevent Monitoring

Dr. Uéslen Rocha

Federal University of Alagoas

Main Talk (30 Minutes)

Growing bulk piezoelectric crystals from the melt: some fundamentals

Dr. Manuel Lente

Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP)

Q&A Sesssion (10 Minutes)

Short Early Career Talk

Advancing Cell Analysis: Leveraging Opto-Acoustofluidic Systems for Bioevent Monitoring

Imagine having a powerful tool that can significantly improve your ability to study and analyze single cells. Our proposed opto-acoustofluidic system achieves just that, by combining Raman spectroscopy and acoustofluidics to provide remarkable enhancements in signal-to-noise ratio, observation time-span, and processing speed. In this talk, I will present a 3D-printed acoustofluidic device that forms effectively stable cell aggregates and facilitates Raman analysis without interference from substrates, leading to improved accuracy and applicability in single cell analysis.

Dr. Uéslen Rocha

Dr. Uéslen Rocha is an Assistant Professor at the Federal University of Alagoas with a Maria Zambrano fellow at the Nanomaterials for Bioimaging Group (nanoBIG) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His research interests include luminescent nanomaterials, biophysics, bioimaging, Raman spectroscopy, and acoustofluidics. Dr. Rocha holds an MSc and a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the Federal University of Alagoas.

Main Talk

Growing bulk piezoelectric crystals from the melt: some fundamentals
Piezoelectric single crystals have higher physical properties than their counterparts polycrystals and are of strong interest of high-tech industry. From the basic science point of view, single crystals also allow investigations that polycrystals do not allow. Therefore, the production of piezoelectric single crystals is scientific-technologically strategic for a country. In particular, the growth of single crystals by fusion using the Bridgman-Stockbarger route demands investigations of the thermal properties of the precursor oxides used in the preparation of the crystals. The determination of the thermal properties of the oxides is crucial to properly set the temperature gradient in the region of the liquid-solid interface and to determine the growth rates of the crystals in order to produce crystals with high chemical and structural homogeneity. In this talk, it is briefly presented how the thermal properties of precursor oxides impacts on the growth of piezoelectric single crystals by the Bridgman-Stockbarger route. It will be shown how the previous thermal analysis of the precursor oxides determine the better crystal growth rates, as well as the better temperature gradients at the liquid-solid interface for each composition, in order to obtain high quality crystals.

Dr. Manuel Lente

Bachelor degree in Physics from Federal University of São Carlos/Brazil and Doctor of Science from Federal University of São Carlos/Brazil. In 2008 he joined the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) as Full Professor. Has experience in the area of condensed matter physics, with emphasis on the production and characterization of: multiferroic ceramics, lead-free piezophotonic ceramics, ferroelectric photovoltaics ceramics and multiferroic single-crystals grown by the Bridgman-Stockbarger technique.