Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Beibei Wang, Tan Liu, Hao Chen, Bangqi Yin, Zhao Zhang, Thomas P. Russell, Shaowei Shi
Summary: Using amphiphilic molecular brushes as surfactants can easily stabilize emulsions and produce structured liquids with exceptional mechanical properties at the oil-water interface. The in situ formation, assembly, and jamming of MBSs offer numerous potential applications, including in chemical biphasic reactions and liquid electronics.
ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION
(2021)
Article
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
C. Ulises Gonzalez-Valle, Bladimir Ramos-Alvarado
Summary: Engineering nano- and microscale systems for water filtration, drug delivery, and biosensing is enabled by the intrinsic interactions of ionic compounds in aqueous environments and limited by our understanding of these polar solid-liquid interfaces. Particularly, the fundamental understanding of the electrostatic properties of the inner pore surface of alumina nanoporous membranes could lead to performance enhancement for evaporation and filtration applications. This investigation reports on the modeling and characterization of the wettability and thermal transport properties of water-alumina interfaces. Abnormal droplet spreading was observed while using documented modeling parameters for water-alumina interfaces. This issue was attributed to the overestimation of Coulombic interactions and was corrected using reactive molecular dynamics simulations. The interfacial entropy change (from bulk to interface) of liquid molecules was calculated for different alumina surfaces. It was found that surfaces with high interfacial entropy change correlate with a high interfacial concentration of water molecules and a dominant contribution from in-plane modes to thermal transport. Conversely, highly mobile water molecules in low entropy interfaces concurred with the out-of-plane modes contributing the most to the energy transport. The hydroxyls on the passivated solid interface led to the formation of hydrogen bonds, and the density number of hydrogen bonds pe...
ACS APPLIED NANO MATERIALS
(2021)
Review
Chemistry, Physical
Qing Zhao, Sanjuna Stalin, Lynden A. Archer
Summary: The solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) is a chemically distinct material phase formed by a combination of electrochemical reduction and chemical reactions at both the explicit and implicit interfaces in all electrochemical cells. Understanding the structure, chemistry, and thermodynamics of the materials that accumulate in such interfacial material phases plays a crucial role in achieving high levels of anode reversibility in secondary batteries. Strategies focusing on the rational design of the SEI at metal anodes, including taking advantage of redox chemistry of electrolyte components and creating artificial SEI outside the cell, are highlighted in the study.
Review
Chemistry, Physical
Ben Jagger, Mauro Pasta
Summary: Lithium metal batteries (LMBs) have attracted great interest as a higher energy density alternative to conventional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the poor cycle life of LMBs due to inhomogeneous lithium deposition and active lithium loss impedes their commercialization. The solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) that forms on the anode surface plays a crucial role in controlling these issues, and current strategies are insufficient for achieving the necessary high cycling stabilities. Further research is needed to understand the SEI and guide future electrolyte design for safe and stable LMBs.
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Alois Wuerger
Summary: The huge Seebeck coefficients observed recently for ionic conductors are shown to arise from a ratchet effect where activated jumps between neighbor sites are rectified by a temperature gradient, thus driving mobile ions toward the cold. For complex systems with mobile molecules like water or polyethylene glycol, there is an even more efficient diffusiophoretic transport mechanism, proportional to the thermally induced concentration gradient of the molecular component. Without free parameters, the model describes experiments on the ionic liquid EMIM-TFSI and hydrated NaPSS, and qualitatively accounts for polymer electrolyte membranes with Seebeck coefficients of hundreds of k(B)/e.
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Biomedical
Rowoon Park, Dong Hyeon Lee, Chin Su Koh, Young Woo Kwon, Seon Yeong Chae, Chang-Seok Kim, Hyun Ho Jung, Joonsoo Jeong, Suck Won Hong
Summary: This work introduces a facile strategy for the development of flexible and stretchable electrodes using laser processing techniques on liquid crystal polymer films. It demonstrates control over laser irradiation parameters to achieve efficient pattern generation and transfer printing of highly conductive laser-induced graphene bioelectrodes. Kirigami-inspired on-skin bioelectrodes and brain-interfaced LIG microelectrode arrays are proposed, combining mechanically compliant architectures with LCP encapsulation for stimulation and recording purposes. This approach offers a cost-effective and scalable route for producing patterned arrays of laser-converted graphene as bioelectrodes.
ADVANCED HEALTHCARE MATERIALS
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Akihiro Morita, Ai Koizumi, Tomonori Hirano
Summary: Transport of ions through liquid-liquid interfaces is crucial for various applications, and molecular dynamics simulations with proper free energy surfaces can provide new insights into the mechanistic picture of ion transport.
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Johannes M. Scheiger, Mariia A. Kuzina, Michael Eigenbrod, Yanchen Wu, Fei Wang, Stefan Heissler, Steffen Hardt, Britta Nestler, Pavel A. Levkin
Summary: A novel liquid confinement device called liquid well is introduced, which can stably contain immiscible fluids using hydrophobic-hydrophilic core-shell patterns on a surface. Liquid wells exhibit unique properties such as self-repair, dynamic behavior, and functionality arising from their liquid aggregate state.
ADVANCED MATERIALS
(2021)
Article
Physics, Fluids & Plasmas
Corisande Lamy, Bruno Dubroca, Philippe Nicolai, Vladimir Tikhonchuk, Jean-Luc Feugeas
Summary: This article demonstrates the use of artificial neural networks (ANN) in predicting nonlocal heat flux transport in hydrodynamic simulations. The results show that ANN can efficiently replace traditional transport modules and achieve a significant computational efficiency improvement.
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Haiyang Li, Jun Wang, Guodong Xia
Summary: Thermal rectification, the phenomenon where the heat flux is much larger in one direction than in the opposite direction, is implemented in an asymmetric solid-liquid-solid sandwiched system with a nano-structured interface. Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the thermal rectification effect is due to the difference in interfacial thermal resistance between Cassie and Wenzel states when reversing the temperature bias. The effects of liquid density, solid-liquid bonding strength, and nanostructure size on thermal rectification are also examined, providing new insights for the design of thermal devices.
Article
Physics, Applied
Cecilia Herrero, Laurent Joly, Samy Merabia
Summary: This paper investigates the interfacial heat transfer between water and gold and proposes a method to increase the interfacial resistance by nanostructuring the gold surface and coating it with graphene. The results show a significant increase in the resistance compared to the planar gold situation. The predicted high thermal resistance makes this system a robust alternative to superhydrophobic materials.
APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Alexandros Metavitsiadis, Wolfram Brenig
Summary: The study examines the energy-density dynamics of the two-dimensional Kitaev spin model on the honeycomb lattice at finite momentum. It highlights the influence of thermally induced disorder and two distinct relaxation channels on the coherent low-temperature energy-density dynamics. The analysis is based on complementary calculations and mean-field treatment of thermal gauge fluctuations.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Jinmei Yang, Yuxian Lu, Lei Jin, Chunxiao Zhao, Yuang Chen, Yang Xu, Fanfan Chen, Jiandong Feng
Summary: This study optically visualized proton transport pathways through nanopores and hydrophilic interfaces using fluorescence signals, revealing an increase in fluorescence intensity at negative voltage due to lateral transport. With the temporal resolution of optical imaging, the technique enabled a comprehensive analysis of proton transport dynamics.
ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Industrial
Hongyu Zhou, Minrui Ran, Yaqiang Li, Zheng Yin, Yonghong Tang, Weidong Zhang, Wenyue Zheng, Junyou Liu
Summary: This paper presents an independently developed liquid-solid separation (LSS) technology for fabricating diamond/Al composites with Cr-coated diamond particles and optimized key parameters. The Cr coating of diamond particles led to improved interface characteristics and higher thermal conductivity of the composites.
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Shuai Zhang, Jiajun Chen, Jianli Liu, Harley Pyles, David Baker, Chun-Long Chen, James J. De Yoreo
Summary: Biomolecular self-assembly is a fundamental process used by life to create functional materials, but progress in engineering self-assembly at solid-liquid interfaces lags behind that in bulk solutions. Recent research has focused on programming self-assembly of peptides, proteins, and peptoids at solid-liquid interfaces, as well as advancing physical understandings of self-assembly pathways using in situ atomic force microscopy. These developments are leading to novel strategies for designing biomaterials organized at and interfaced with inorganic surfaces.
ADVANCED MATERIALS
(2021)