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At low temperatures (10 K), hydrogen atoms can diffuse quickly on grain ice mantles and frequently encounter hydrogen molecules, which cover a notable fraction of grain surface. The desorption energy of H atoms on H2 substrates is much less…
Surface effect of low-surface-tension contaminants accumulating at the evaporation surface can easily induce membrane wetting in the application of membrane distillation, especially in hypersaline scenarios. In this work, we propose a novel…
If you walk on sand, it supports your weight. How do the disordered forces between particles in sand organize, to keep you from sinking? This simple question is surprisingly difficult to answer experimentally: measuring forces in three…
The presence of interparticle cohesion can drastically change the behavior of granular materials. For instance, powders are challenging to handle, and one can make a sandcastle using wet grains. In this study, we report experimental results…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
It is widely known that freezing breaks soft, wet materials. However, the mechanism underlying this damage is still not clear. To understand this process, we freeze model, brittle hydrogel samples, while observing the growth of ice-filled…
We numerically study the dynamics of a three-dimensional contractile fluid droplet in the bulk and under confinement. We show that varying activity leads to a variety of shapes and motile regimes whose motion is driven by an interplay…
Pristine graphene is not suitable for hydrogen storage at ambient conditions since it binds the hydrogen molecules only by van der Waals interactions. However, the adsorption energy of the hydrogen molecules can be improved by doping or…
Experimental results on the formation of molecular hydrogen on amorphous silicate surfaces are presented and analyzed using a rate equation model. The energy barriers for the relevant diffusion and desorption processes are obtained. They…
Hydrogels are promising systems for separation applications due to their structural characteristics (i.e. hydrophilicity and porosity). In our study, we investigate the permeation of suspensions of rigid latex particles of different sizes…
Atmospheric water harvesting is urgently needed given increasing global water scarcity. Current sorbent-based devices that cycle between water capture and release have low harvesting rates. We envision a radically different multi-material…
When a hydrophilic and deformable porous material is immersed in a bath, it may absorb the solvent and expand by several times its volume, thus forming a highly soft and porous hydrogel. A stress applied on the soft hydrogel surface deforms…
Liquid water is reluctant to lose hydrogen-bond coordination. Here we reveal that it also demands contraction and reorientation of the second molecular shell to compensate for coordination defects. Such molecular principle will be shown to…
We study the effect of fluids on the angle of repose and the segregation of granular matter poured into a silo. The experiments are conducted in two regimes where: (i) the volume fraction of the fluid is small and it forms liquid bridges…
Many clays, soils, biological tissues, foods, and coatings are shrinkable, granular materials: they are composed of packed, hydrated grains that shrink when dried. In many cases, these packings crack during drying, critically hindering…
In the interstellar clouds, molecular hydrogens are formed from atomic hydrogen on grain surfaces. An atomic hydrogen hops around till it finds another one with which it combines. This necessarily implies that the average recombination…
Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and industry; their mechanical behavior has been of academic and engineering interest for centuries. One of the reasons for their rather complex mechanical behavior is that stresses exerted on a…
Capillary forces are involved in a variety of natural phenomena, ranging from droplet breakup to the physics of clouds. The forces from surface tension can also be exploited in industrial application provided the length scales involved are…
We propose a multi-layer graphene-based device in which storage and release of atomic hydrogen is obtained by exploiting and controlling the corrugation of the layers. The proposal is based on density-functional simulations of hydrogen…
A method of modifying the roughness of soda-lime glass spheres is presented, with the purpose of tuning inter-particle friction. The effect of chemical etching on the surface topography and the bulk frictional properties of grains is…