Solar-Driven Soft Robots.

Stimuli-responsive materials have been lately employed in soft robotics enabling new classes of robots that can emulate biological systems. The untethered operation of soft materials with high power light, magnetic field, and electric field has been previously demonstrated. While electric and magnetic fields can be stimulants for untethered actuation, their rapid decay as a function of distance limits their efficacy for long-range operations.

Polymer Infused Porous Surfaces for Robust, Thermally Conductive, Self-Healing Coatings for Dropwise Condensation.

Hydrophobic coatings with low thermal resistance promise a significant enhancement in condensation heat transfer performance by promoting dropwise condensation in applications including power generation, water treatment, and thermal management of high-performance electronics. However, after nearly a century of research, coatings with adequate robustness remain elusive due to the extreme environments within many condensers and strict design requirements needed to achieve enhancement. In this work, we enable long-lasting condensation heat transfer enhancement dropwise condensation by infusing a hydrophobic polymer, Teflon AF, into a porous nanostructured surface.

Theoretical and experimental investigation of haze in transparent aerogels.

Haze in optically transparent aerogels severely degrades the visual experience, which has prevented their adoption in windows despite their outstanding thermal insulation property. Previous studies have primarily relied on experiments to characterize haze in aerogels, however, a theoretical framework to systematically investigate haze in porous media is lacking. In this work, we present a radiative transfer model that can predict haze in aerogels based on their physical properties.

Passive directional sub-ambient daytime radiative cooling.

Demonstrations of passive daytime radiative cooling have primarily relied on complex and costly spectrally selective nanophotonic structures with high emissivity in the transparent atmospheric spectral window and high reflectivity in the solar spectrum. Here, we show a directional approach to passive radiative cooling that exploits the angular confinement of solar irradiation in the sky to achieve sub-ambient cooling during the day regardless of the emitter properties in the solar spectrum. We experimentally demonstrate this approach using a setup comprising a polished aluminum disk that reflects direct solar irradiation and a white infrared-transparent polyethylene convection cover that minimizes diffuse solar irradiation.

Specular side reflectors for high efficiency thermal-to-optical energy conversion.

The performance of incandescent light bulbs and thermophotovoltaic devices is fundamentally limited by our ability to tailor the emission spectrum of the thermal emitter. While much work has focused on improving the spectral selectivity of emitters and filters, relatively low view factors between the emitter and filter limit the efficiency of the systems. In this work, we investigate the use of specular side reflectors between the emitter and filter to increase the effective view factor and thus system efficiency.