Category: Research

Smart material for controlled vapor sorption and water release

Research, Thermal Management, Thesis/Semester Project

Hygroscopic metal organic framework (MOF)-based materials are promising for energy-efficient cooling and water harvesting.

Bubble-free water electrolysis

Energy Conversion, Research, Thesis/Semester Project

Design and optimize a bubble-free capillarity-driven flow cell for electrolysis. Investigate the effect of utilizing various electrodes and membranes with different geometries and materials

Simulation of evaporation into microchannels

Interfacial Transport, Research, Thesis/Semester Project

Evaporation plays a critical role in energy transfer processes. Evaporation physics are often much simplified for designing of real systems, but the applicability of these simplifications to small-scale flows is unclear.

Bubble coalescence in boiling

Interfacial Transport, Research, Thesis/Semester Project

Understand and control bubble coalescence for designing high-performance boilers and evaporators

Passive radiative cooling

Research, Thermal Management

Develop durable, weather-resistant passive radiative cooling panel, delivering silent, maintenance‑free cooling that slashes HVAC loads, lowers operating costs, and shrinks your carbon footprint.

Probing contamination in microscale porous evaporator

Interfacial Transport, Research, Thesis/Semester Project

Investigate accumulation of impurities non-invasively with advanced metrology and spectroscopy

Traditionally Nonwetting Surface Made to Wet Mercury

Research

We present a surface-engineering approach that turns all liquids highly wetting, including ultra-high surface tension fluids such as mercury.

Transport-based modeling of nucleation on electrodes

Energy Conversion, Research

Fundamental understanding of the nucleation process, which is critical to system optimization, remains limited as prior works generally focused on the thermodynamics and have not considered the coupling between surface geometries and different forms of transport in the electrolytes.

Evaporation Kinetics Demonstrated Through Ultrathin Nanoporous Membranes

Interfacial Transport, Research

Elucidate kinetically limited evaporation where the molecular gas dynamics close to the liquid-vapor interface dominate the overall transport

Hierarchical high flux evaporative cooler

Archive, Research

A new paradigm of phase change heat transfer enabled by a hierarchical evaporator, which favors high volatility, low surface tension liquids rather than water