Modeling of Microneedle Arrays in Transdermal Drug Delivery Applications.

The use of computational tools for the development of technologies in fields such as medicine and engineering has facilitated the process of designing new components and devices for these areas. In this work, two proposals focused on a hollow microneedle array (MNA) for the administration of an analgesic drug are shown and evaluated by means of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation distributed in three stages. In the first stage, the behavior of lidocaine through the MNA was evaluated as a workflow. Then, the possible entry of the drug into the organism, which was established as a porous aqueous medium, was modeled. Finally, a joint simulation was performed to understand the general behavior in the interaction between the outflow of an MNA and the body to which lidocaine is administered. The input parameters to the simulation were set at a velocity of 0.05 m∙s-1, at a pressure of 2000 Pa, the dominant behavior was defined as laminar flow, and a resistive pressure at the inlet of 400 Pa. Our results indicate that the vertical flow exhibits a better fluid distribution across the MNAs and favorable infiltration behavior, representing better delivery of the analgesic to the skin capillaries.

Phonon Dominated Thermal Transport in Metallic Niobium Diselenide from First Principles Calculations.

Niobium diselenide (NbSe2) is a layered transition metal dichalcogenide material which possesses unique electrical and superconducting properties for future nanodevices. While the superconducting, electrical, and bulk thermal transport properties of NbSe2 have been widely studied, the in-plane thermal transport property of NbSe2, which is important for potential thermoelectric applications, has not been thoroughly investigated. In this report, we study the lattice in-plane thermal transport of 2D NbSe2 by solving the phonon Boltzmann transport equation with the help of the first principles calculation. The thermal conductivity obtained at room temperature is 12.3 W/mK. A detailed analysis shows that the transverse acoustic phonon dominates the lattice thermal transport, and an anomalously small portion of electron contribution to the total thermal conductivity is observed for this metallic phase. The results agree well with experimental measurements and provide detailed mode-by-mode thermal conductivity contribution from different phonon modes. This study can provide useful information for integrating NbSe2 in nanodevices where both electrical and thermal properties are critical, showing great potential for integrating monolayer NbSe2 to thermoelectric devices.