Evelyn N. Wang

Nanostructured materials for water desalination.

Desalination of seawater and brackish water is becoming an increasingly important means to address the scarcity of fresh water resources in the world. Decreasing the energy requirements and infrastructure costs of existing desalination technologies remains a challenge. By enabling the manipulation of matter and control of transport at nanometer length scales, the emergence of nanotechnology offers new opportunities to advance water desalination technologies. This review focuses on nanostructured materials that are directly involved in the separation of water from salt as opposed to mitigating issues such as fouling. We discuss separation mechanisms and novel transport phenomena in materials including zeolites, carbon nanotubes, and graphene with potential applications to reverse osmosis, capacitive deionization, and multi-stage flash, among others. Such nanostructured materials can potentially enable the development of next-generation desalination systems with increased efficiency and capacity.

A nanophotonic solar thermophotovoltaic device

The most common approaches to generating power from sunlight are either photovoltaic, in which sunlight directly excites electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor, or solar-thermal, in which sunlight drives a mechanical heat engine. Photovoltaic power generation is intermittent and typically only exploits a portion of the solar spectrum efficiently, whereas the intrinsic irreversibilities of small heat engines make the solar-thermal approach best suited for utility-scale power plants. There is, therefore, an increasing need for hybrid technologies for solar power generation. By converting sunlight into thermal emission tuned to energies directly above the photovoltaic bandgap using a hot absorber-emitter, solar thermophotovoltaics promise to leverage the benefits of both approaches: high efficiency, by harnessing the entire solar spectrum; scalability and compactness, because of their solid-state nature; and dispatchablility, owing to the ability to store energy using thermal or chemical means. However, efficient collection of sunlight in the absorber and spectral control in the emitter are particularly challenging at high operating temperatures. This drawback has limited previous experimental demonstrations of this approach to conversion efficiencies around or below 1% (refs 9, 10, 11). Here, we report on a full solar thermophotovoltaic device, which, thanks to the nanophotonic properties of the absorber-emitter surface, reaches experimental efficiencies of 3.2%. The device integrates a multiwalled carbon nanotube absorber and a one-dimensional Si/SiO2 photonic-crystal emitter on the same substrate, with the absorber-emitter areas optimized to tune the energy balance of the device. Our device is planar and compact and could become a viable option for high-performance solar thermophotovoltaic energy conversion.

Uni-directional liquid spreading on asymmetric nanostructured surfaces

Controlling surface wettability and liquid spreading on patterned surfaces is of significant interest for a broad range of applications, including DNA microarrays, digital lab-on-a-chip, anti-fogging and fog-harvesting, inkjet printing and thin-film lubrication. Advancements in surface engineering, with the fabrication of various micro/nanoscale topographic features, and selective chemical patterning on surfaces, have enhanced surface wettability and enabled control of the liquid film thickness and final wetted shape. In addition, groove geometries and patterned surface chemistries have produced anisotropic wetting, where contact-angle variations in different directions resulted in elongated droplet shapes. In all of these studies, however, the wetting behaviour preserves left-right symmetry. Here, we demonstrate that we can harness the design of asymmetric nanostructured surfaces to achieve uni-directional liquid spreading, where the liquid propagates in a single preferred direction and pins in all others. Through experiments and modelling, we determined that the spreading characteristic is dependent on the degree of nanostructure asymmetry, the height-to-spacing ratio of the nanostructures and the intrinsic contact angle. The theory, based on an energy argument, provides excellent agreement with experimental data. The insights gained from this work offer new opportunities to tailor advanced nanostructures to achieve active control of complex flow patterns and wetting on demand.

Effect of Droplet Morphology on Growth Dynamics and Heat Transfer during Condensation on Superhydrophobic Nanostructured Surfaces

Condensation on superhydrophobic nanostructured surfaces offers new opportunities for enhanced energy conversion, efficient water harvesting, and high performance thermal management. These surfaces are designed to be Cassie stable and favor the formation of suspended droplets on top of the nanostructures as compared to partially wetting droplets which locally wet the base of the nanostructures. These suspended droplets promise minimal contact line pinning and promote passive droplet shedding at sizes smaller than the characteristic capillary length. However, the gas films underneath such droplets may significantly hinder the overall heat and mass transfer performance. We investigated droplet growth dynamics on superhydrophobic nanostructured surfaces to elucidate the importance of droplet morphology on heat and mass transfer. By taking advantage of well-controlled functionalized silicon nanopillars, we observed the growth and shedding behavior of suspended and partially wetting droplets on the same surface during condensation. Environmental scanning electron microscopy was used to demonstrate that initial droplet growth rates of partially wetting droplets were 6× larger than that of suspended droplets. We subsequently developed a droplet growth model to explain the experimental results and showed that partially wetting droplets had 4-6× higher heat transfer rates than that of suspended droplets. On the basis of these findings, the overall performance enhancement created by surface nanostructuring was examined in comparison to a flat hydrophobic surface. We showed these nanostructured surfaces had 56% heat flux enhancement for partially wetting droplet morphologies and 71% heat flux degradation for suspended morphologies in comparison to flat hydrophobic surfaces. This study provides insights into the previously unidentified role of droplet wetting morphology on growth rate, as well as the need to design Cassie stable nanostructured surfaces with tailored droplet morphologies to achieve enhanced heat and mass transfer during dropwise condensation.

Wettability of Graphene

Graphene, an atomically thin two-dimensional material, has received significant attention due to its extraordinary electronic, optical, and mechanical properties. Studies focused on understanding the wettability of graphene for thermo-fluidic and surface-coating applications, however, have been sparse. Meanwhile, wettability results reported in literature via static contact angle measurement experiments have been contradictory and highlight the lack of clear understanding of the underlying physics that dictates wetting behavior. In this work, dynamic contact angle measurements and detailed graphene surface characterizations were performed to demonstrate that the defects present in CVD grown and transferred graphene coatings result in unusually high contact angle hysteresis (16-37°) on these otherwise smooth surfaces. Hence, understanding the effect of the underlying substrate based on static contact angle measurements as reported in literature is insufficient. The advancing contact angle measurements on mono-, bi-, and trilayer graphene sheets on copper, thermally grown silica (SiO2), and glass substrates were observed to be independent of the number of layers of graphene and in good agreement with corresponding molecular dynamics simulations and theoretical calculations. Irrespective of the number of graphene layers, the advancing contact angle values were also in good agreement with the advancing contact angle on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG), reaffirming the negligible effect of the underlying substrate. These results suggest that the advancing contact angle is a true representation of a graphene-coated surface while the receding contact angle is significantly influenced by intrinsic defects introduced during the growth and transfer processes. These observations, where the underlying substrates do not affect the wettability of graphene coatings, is shown to be due to the large interlayer spacing resulting from the loose interlamellar coupling between the graphene sheet and the underlying substrate. The fundamental insights on graphene-water interactions reported in this study is an important step towards developing graphene-assisted surface coatings for heat transfer and microfluidics devices.

Structured surfaces for enhanced pool boiling heat transfer

We experimentally investigated surface roughness-augmented wettability on critical heat flux (CHF) during pool boiling with horizontally oriented surfaces. Microstructured surfaces with a wide range of well-defined surface roughness were fabricated, and a maximum CHF of ∼208 W/cm2 was achieved with a surface roughness of ∼6. An analytical force-balance model was extended to explain the CHF enhancement. The excellent agreement found between the model and experimental data supports the idea that roughness-amplified capillary forces are responsible for the CHF enhancement on structured surfaces. The insights gained from this work suggest design guidelines for new surface technologies with high heat removal capability.

Water desalination: Graphene cleans up water

Graphene promises water desalination at throughputs much higher than state-of-the-art membranes.

Water harvesting from air with metal-organic frameworks powered by natural sunlight

Solar heat helps harvest humidity Atmospheric humidity and droplets constitute a huge freshwater resource, especially at the low relative humidity (RH) levels typical of arid environments. Water can be adsorbed by microporous materials such as zeolites, but often, making these materials release the water requires too much energy to be practical. Kim et al. used a metal-organic framework (MOF) material that has a steep increase in water uptake over a narrow RH range to harvest water, using only ambient sunlight to heat the material. They obtained 2.8 liters of water per kilogram of MOF daily at 20% RH. Science, this issue p. 430 Efficient extraction is enabled by a steep increase in water uptake within a narrow range of relative humidity. Atmospheric water is a resource equivalent to ~10% of all fresh water in lakes on Earth. However, an efficient process for capturing and delivering water from air, especially at low humidity levels (down to 20%), has not been developed. We report the design and demonstration of a device based on a porous metal-organic framework {MOF-801, [Zr6O4(OH)4(fumarate)6]} that captures water from the atmosphere at ambient conditions by using low-grade heat from natural sunlight at a flux of less than 1 sun (1 kilowatt per square meter). This device is capable of harvesting 2.8 liters of water per kilogram of MOF daily at relative humidity levels as low as 20% and requires no additional input of energy.

Micromachined jets for liquid impingement cooling of VLSI chips

Two-phase microjet impingement cooling is a potential solution for removing heat from high-power VLSI chips. Arrays of microjets promise to achieve more uniform chip temperatures and very high heat transfer coefficients. This paper presents the design and fabrication of single-jets and multijet arrays with circular orifice diameters ranging from 40 to 76 /spl mu/m, as well as integrated heater and temperature sensor test devices. The performance of the microjet heat sinks is studied using the integrated heater device as well as an industry standard 1 cm/sup 2/ thermal test chip. For single-phase, the silicon temperature distribution data are consistent with a model accounting for silicon conduction and fluid advection using convection coefficients in the range from 0.072 to 4.4 W/cm/sup 2/K. For two-phase, the experimental results show a heat removal of up to 90 W on a 1 cm/sup 2/ heated area using a four-jet array with 76 /spl mu/m diameter orifices at a flowrate of 8 ml/min with a temperature rise of 100/spl deg/C. The data indicate convection coefficients are not significantly different from coefficients for pool boiling, which motivates future work on optimizing flowrates and flow regimes. These microjet heat sinks are intended for eventual integration into a closed-loop electroosmotically pumped cooling system.

Methylammonium Bismuth Iodide as a Lead-Free, Stable Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Solar Absorber.

Methylammonium lead halide (MAPbX3 ) perovskites exhibit exceptional carrier transport properties. But their commercial deployment as solar absorbers is currently limited by their intrinsic instability in the presence of humidity and their lead content. Guided by our theoretical predictions, we explored the potential of methylammonium bismuth iodide (MBI) as a solar absorber through detailed materials characterization. We synthesized phase-pure MBI by solution and vapor processing. In contrast to MAPbX3, MBI is air stable, forming a surface layer that does not increase the recombination rate. We found that MBI luminesces at room temperature, with the vapor-processed films exhibiting superior photoluminescence (PL) decay times that are promising for photovoltaic applications. The thermodynamic, electronic, and structural features of MBI that are amenable to these properties are also present in other hybrid ternary bismuth halide compounds. Through MBI, we demonstrate a lead-free and stable alternative to MAPbX3 that has a similar electronic structure and nanosecond lifetimes.