Related papers: Hydrogel modified evaporation interface for highly…
Moisture-capturing hydrogels have emerged as attractive sorbent materials capable of converting ambient humidity into liquid water. Recent works have demonstrated exceptional water capture capabilities of hydrogels, while simultaneously,…
Nanopores are both a tool to study single-molecule biophysics and nanoscale ion transport, but also a promising material for desalination or osmotic power generation. Understanding the physics underlying ion transport through nano-sized…
Hypothesis: Surfactants are often added to aqueous solutions to induce spreading on otherwise unwettable hydrophobic surfaces. Alternatively, they can be introduced directly into solid hydrophobic materials-such as the soft elastomer,…
The surface tension of a liquid, which drives most free surface flows at small scales, is often measured with the pendant drop method due to its simplicity and reliability. When the drop is suspended in air, controlling the ambient…
Current major approaches to access surface hydrophobicity include directly introducing hydrophobic nonpolar groups/molecules into surface or elaborately fabricating surface roughness. Here, for the first time, molecular dynamics simulations…
We present the smoothed-particle hydrodynamics implementation SPHGal, which combines some recently proposed improvements in GADGET. This includes a pressure-entropy formulation with a Wendland kernel, a higher order estimate of velocity…
The nucleation of gas hydrates is of great interest in flow assurance, global energy demand, and carbon capture and storage. A complex molecular understanding is critical to control hydrate nucleation and growth in the context of potential…
The heterogeneous distribution of water-repellent materials at the soil surface causes a phenomenon known as fractional wettability. This condition frequently triggers destabilization of the wetting front during water infiltration,…
Rough or textured hydrophobic surfaces are dubbed superhydrophobic due to their numerous desirable properties, such as water repellency and interfacial slip. Superhydrophobicity stems from an aversion for water to wet the surface texture,…
Biomolecular condensates organize biochemical processes by spatially concentrating molecules while allowing for dynamic exchange with their surroundings. However, transport across their interface can be strongly attenuated, leading to…
Using a hydrodynamic lattice-gas model, we study interface growth in a binary fluid with various concentrations of surfactant. We find that the interface is smoothed by small concentrations of surfactant, while microemulsion droplets form…
Passive solar desalination is an emerging low-cost technology for fresh water production. State of the art desalinators typically evaporate water using wicking structures to achieve high solar-to-vapor efficiency by minimizing heat loss.…
The study of interactions between biomimetic membranes and micron-sized particles is crucial for understanding various biological processes. Here, we control microparticle spontaneous engulfment by giant lipid vesicles by tuning particle…
Metasurfaces composed of subwavelength unit cells usually require a large number of unit cells which leads to complicated design and optimization. Aggressive discretization in a metasurface can significantly reduce the number of unit cells…
In recent experiments, a sequence of changes in the wetting state (`wetting transitions') has been observed upon increasing the temperature in systems consisting of pentane on pure water and of hexane on brine. This sequence of two…
A key challenge in performing experiments with microparticles is controlling their adhesion to substrates. For example, levitation of a microparticle initially resting on a surface requires overcoming the surface adhesion forces to deliver…
Hypothesis: A broad range of phenomena, such as emulsification and emulsion stability, foam formation or liquid evaporation, are closely related to the dynamics of adsorbing colloidal particles. Elucidation of the mechanisms implied is key…
Electrosprays are a powerful technique to generate charged micro/nanodroplets. In the last century, the technique received extensive study and successful applications, including a Nobel price in Chemistry. However, nowadays its use in…
An evaporating droplet is a dynamic system in which flow is spontaneously generated to minimize the surface energy, dragging particles to the borders and ultimately resulting in the so-called "coffee-stain effect". The situation becomes…
Liquids in contact with solids are submitted to intermolecular forces making liquids heterogeneous and stress tensors are not any more spherical as in homogeneous bulks. The aim of this article is to show that a square-gradient functional…