The ability to efficiently utilize solar thermal energy to enable liquid-to-vapor phase transition has great technological implications for a wide variety of applications, such as water treatment and chemical fractionation. Here, we demonstrate that functionalizing graphene using hydrophilic groups can greatly enhance the solar thermal steam generation efficiency. Our results show that specially functionalized graphene can improve the overall solar-to-vapor efficiency from 38% to 48% at one sun conditions compared to chemically reduced graphene oxide. Our experiments show that such an improvement is a surface effect mainly attributed to the more hydrophilic feature of functionalized graphene, which influences the water meniscus profile at the vapor-liquid interface due to capillary effect. This will lead to thinner water films close to the three-phase contact line, where the water surface temperature is higher since the resistance of thinner water film is smaller, leading to more efficient evaporation. This strategy of functionalizing graphene to make it more hydrophilic can be potentially integrated with the existing macroscopic heat isolation strategies to further improve the overall solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency.
Precise spatio-temporal control of surface bubble movement can benefit a wide range of applications like high-throughput drug screening, combinatorial material development, microfluidic logic, colloidal and molecular assembly, etc. In this work, we demonstrate that surface bubbles on a solid surface are directed by a laser to move at high speeds (> 1.8 mm/s), and we elucidate the mechanism to be the de-pinning of the three-phase contact line (TPCL) by rapid plasmonic heating of nanoparticles (NPs) deposited in-situ during bubble movement. Based on our observations, we deduce a stick-slip mechanism based on asymmetric fore-aft plasmonic heating: local evaporation at the front TPCL due to plasmonic heating de-pins and extends the front TPCL, 2 followed by the advancement of the trailing TPCL to resume a spherical bubble shape to minimize surface energy. The continuous TPCL drying during bubble movement also enables well-defined contact line deposition of NP clusters along the moving path. Our finding is beneficial to various microfluidics and pattern writing applications.
Ion current rectification inversion is observed in a funnel-shaped nanochannel above a threshold voltage roughly corresponding to the under-limiting to over-limiting current transition. Previous experimental studies have examined rectification at either low-voltages (under-limiting current region) for conical nanopores/funnel-shaped nanochannels or at high-voltages (over-limiting region) for straight nanochannels with asymmetric entrances or asymmetric interfacing microchannels. The observed rectification inversion occurs because the system resistance is shifted, beyond a threshold voltage, from being controlled by intra-channel ion concentration-polarization to that controlled by external concentration-polarization. Additionally, strong hysteresis effects, due to residual concentration-polarization, manifest themselves through the dependence of the transient current rectification on voltage scan rate.
We present an analysis of hydrodynamic effects in systems involving ion transport from an aqueous electrolyte to an ion-selective surface. These systems are described by the Poisson-Nernst-Planck and Navier-Stokes equations. Historically, such systems were modeled by one-dimensional geometries with spatial coordinate in the direction of transport and normal to the ion-selective surface. Rubinstein and Zaltzman [JFM 579, 173-226 (2007)] showed that when such systems are unbounded in the transverse directions, a hydrodynamic instability can occur. This instability, referred to as electroconvective instability, leads to advective mixing, which results in overlimiting transport rates significantly beyond what is predicted from one-dimensional models. In this study, we present an analysis of electroconvection in confined systems, considering a broad range of applications including microfluidic systems and porous media. Our analysis reveals that full confinement in the transverse directions significantly suppresses electroconvection and overlimiting current. However, when at least one transverse direction allows for flow escape, such as in thin but wide channels or in porous media, the onset of instability is only weakly affected by confinement. We will also present a review of relevant literature and discuss how the present study resolves the contradictory contrasts between the results of recent work on this topic.
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