Passive vapor generation systems combining interfacial solar heating and vaporization enthalpy recycling enable high-efficient low-cost desalination.

Lubricant infused surfaces (LIS) are a recently developed and promising approach to fluid repellency for applications in biology, microfluidics, thermal management, lab-on-a-chip, and beyond. The design of LIS has been explored in past work in terms of surface energies, which need to be determined empirically for each interface in a given system. Here, we developed an approach that predicts a priori whether an arbitrary combination of solid and lubricant will repel a given impinging fluid. This model was validated with experiments performed in our work as well as in literature and was subsequently used to develop a new framework for LIS with distinct design guidelines. Furthermore, insights gained from the model led to the experimental demonstration of LIS using uncoated high-surface-energy solids, thereby eliminating the need for unreliable low-surface-energy coatings and resulting in LIS repelling the lowest surface tension impinging fluid (butane, γ ≈ 13 mN/m) reported to date.

Vapor condensation is routinely used as an effective means of transferring heat or separating fluids. Dropwise condensation, where discrete droplets form on the condenser surface, offers a potential improvement in heat transfer of up to an order of magnitude compared to filmwise condensation, where a liquid film covers the surface. Low surface tension fluid condensates such as hydrocarbons pose a unique challenge since typical hydrophobic condenser coatings used to promote dropwise condensation of water often do not repel fluids with lower surface tensions. Recent work has shown that lubricant infused surfaces (LIS) can promote droplet formation of hydrocarbons. In this work, we confirm the effectiveness of LIS in promoting dropwise condensation by providing experimental measurements of heat transfer performance during hydrocarbon condensation on a LIS, which enhances heat transfer by ≈450% compared to an uncoated surface. We also explored improvement through removal of noncondensable gases and highlighted a failure mechanism whereby shedding droplets depleted the lubricant over time. Enhanced condensation heat transfer for low surface tension fluids on LIS presents the opportunity for significant energy savings in natural gas processing as well as improvements in thermal management, heating and cooling, and power generation.

Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials have shown great potential for applications in nanoscale electronic and optical devices. A fundamental property of these 2D flakes that needs to be well characterized is the thermal expansion coefficient (TEC), which is instrumental to the dry transfer process and thermal management of 2D material-based devices. Yet, most of current studies of 2D materials' TEC extensively rely on simulations due to the difficulty of performing experimental measurements on an atomically thin, micron-sized, and optically transparent 2D flake. In this work, we present a three-substrate approach to characterize the TEC of monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) using micro-Raman spectroscopy. The temperature dependence of the Raman peak shift was characterized with three different substrate conditions, from which the in-plane TEC of monolayer MoS 2 was extracted based on lattice symmetries. Independently from two different phonon modes of MoS 2 , we measured the in-plane TECs as (7.6±0.9)×10 -6 1/K and (7.4±0.5)×10 -6 1/K, respectively, which are in good agreement with previously reported values based on first principle calculations. Our work is not only useful for thermal mismatch reduction during material transfer or device operation, but provides a general experimental method that does not rely on simulations to study key properties of 2D materials.

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Boiling is an essential process in numerous applications including power plants, thermal management, water purification, and steam generation. Previous studies have shown that surfaces with microcavities or biphilic wettability can enhance the efficiency of boiling heat transfer, that is, the heat transfer coefficient (HTC). Surfaces with permeable structures such as micropillar arrays, in contrast, have shown significant enhancement of the critical heat flux (CHF). In this work, we investigated microtube structures, where a cavity is defined at the center of a pillar, as structural building blocks to enhance HTC and CHF simultaneously in a controllable manner. We demonstrated simultaneous CHF and HTC enhancements of up to 62 and 244%, respectively, compared to those of a smooth surface. The experimental data along with high-speed images elucidate the mechanism for simultaneous enhancement where bubble nucleation occurs in the microtube cavities for increased HTC and microlayer evaporation occurs around microtube sidewalls for increased CHF. Furthermore, we combined micropillars and microtubes to create surfaces that further increased CHF by achieving a path to separate nucleating bubbles and rewetting liquids. This work provides guidelines for the systematic surface design for boiling heat transfer enhancement and has important implications for understanding boiling heat transfer mechanisms.

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