A new class of electronic materials from food and foodstuff was developed to form a “toolkit” for edible electronics along with inorganic materials. Electrical components like resistors, capacitors and inductors were fabricated with such materials and tested. Applicable devices such as filters, microphones and pH sensors were built with edible materials. Among the applications, a wireless edible pH sensor was optimized in terms of form factor, fabrication process and cost. This dissertation discusses the material sciences of food industry, design and fabrication of electronics and biomedical engineering by demonstrating edible electronic materials, components and devices such as filters, microphones and pH sensors. pH sensors are optimized for two different generations of design and fabrication.

Accurate knowledge and understanding of thermal conductivity is very important in awide variety of applications both at microscopic and macroscopic scales. Estimation,however varies widely with respect to scale and application. At a lattice level, calcu-lation of thermal conductivity of any particular alloy require very heavy computationeven for a relatively small number of atoms. This thesis aims to run conventionalmolecular dynamic simulations for a particular supercell and then employ a machinelearning based approach and compare the two in hopes of developing a method togreatly reduce computational costs as well as increase the scale and time frame ofthese systems. Conventional simulations were run using interatomic potentials basedon density function theory-basedab initiocalculations. Then deep learning neuralnetwork based interatomic potentials were used run similar simulations to comparethe two approaches.

Inspired by the design of lightweight cellular structures in nature, humans have made cellular solids for a wide range of engineering applications. Cellular structures composed of solid and gaseous phases, and an interconnected network of solid struts or plates that form the cell's edges and faces. This makes them an ideal candidate for numerous energy absorption applications in the military, transportation, and automotive industries. The objective of the thesis is to study the energy-absorption of multi-material cellular structures. Cellular structures made from Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS) a thermoplastic polymer and Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) a thermoplastic elastomer were manufactured using dual extrusion 3D printing. The surface-based structures were designed with partitions to allocate different materials using Matlab and nTopology. Aperiodicity was introduced to the design through perturbation. The specimens were designed for two wall thicknesses - 0.5mm and 1mm, respectively. In total, 18 specimens were designed and 3D printed. All the specimens were tested under quasi-static compression. A detailed analysis was performed to study the energy absorption metrics and draw conclusions, with emphasis on specific energy absorbed as a function of relative density, efficiency, and peak stress of the specimens to hypothesize and validate mechanisms for observed behavior. All the specimens were analyzed to draw comparisons across designs.

Gas Diffusion Layers (GDL) based on PUREBLACK® carbon and VULCAN® (XC72R) carbon along with catalyst coated membranes were used to fabricate the membrane electrode assemblies for use in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Polyethylene glycol was used as the pore-forming agent on the microporous layer to improve the lower and higher relative humidity performance of the fuel cells. Accelerated stress tests based on the dissolution effect of GDLs were conducted and the long-term performance of the GDLs was evaluated. A single-cell fuel cell was used to evaluate the effect of porosity of the micro-porous layer and the effect of different types of carbon powder on the performance of the fuel cell at different operating relative humidity conditions and compared with commercial GDLs.Both PUREBLACK® and VULCAN® (XC72R) based GDLs show crack-free surface morphology in the Scanning electron microscopy and hydrophobic characteristics in the contact angle measurements. The fuel cell performance is evaluated under relative humidity conditions of 60 and 100 % using H2/O2 and H2/Air at 70 ℃ and the durability is also evaluated for the sample with and without 30% PEG for both carbons. The pristine PUREBLACK® based GDL sample with 30% pore-forming agent (total pore volume of 1.72 cc.g-1) demonstrated the highest performance (peak power densities of 432 and 444 mW.cm-2 at 100 and 60 % RH respectively, using H2/Air). There was a significant increase in the macropores when GDLs are aged in H2O2 and the contact angle dropped to about 14 and 95° for PUREBLACK® and VULCAN® carbon, respectively. Overall PUREBLACK® based GDLs performed the best after ageing both in H2O2 and H2O (average performance degradation of 8% in H2O2 and 8.25% in H2O).