Thermodynamics of Electrochemical Marine Inorganic Carbon Removal.

In recent years, marine carbon removal technologies have gained attention as a means of reducing greenhouse gas concentrations. One family of these technologies is electrochemical systems, which employ Faradaic reactions to drive alkalinity-swings and enable dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) removal as gaseous CO or as solid minerals. In this work, we develop a thermodynamic framework to estimate upper bounds on performance for Faradaic DIC removal systems.

Enhanced Electrostatic Dust Removal from Solar Panels Using Transparent Conductive Nano-Textured Surfaces.

Dust accumulation on solar panels is a mjor operational challenge faced by the photovoltaic industry. Removing dust using water-based cleaning is expensive and unsustainable. Dust repulsion via charge induction is an efficient way to clean solar panels and recover power output without consuming any water.

Hierarchically conductive electrodes unlock stable and scalable CO electrolysis.

Electrochemical CO reduction has emerged as a promising CO utilization technology, with Gas Diffusion Electrodes becoming the predominant architecture to maximize performance. Such electrodes must maintain robust hydrophobicity to prevent flooding, while also ensuring high conductivity to minimize ohmic losses. Intrinsic material tradeoffs have led to two main architectures: carbon paper is highly conductive but floods easily; while expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene is flooding resistant but non-conductive, limiting electrode sizes to just 5 cm.

Crystal Patterning from Aqueous Solutions via Solutal Instabilities.

Fluid instabilities can be harnessed for facile self-assembly of patterned structures on the nano- and microscale. Evaporative self-assembly from drops is one simple technique that enables a range of patterning behaviors due to the multitude of fluid instabilities that arise due to the simultaneous existence of temperature and solutal gradients. However, the method suffers from limited controllability over patterns that can arise and their morphology.