Publications by authors named "Zichao Yuan"

Obtaining water and renewable energy from the atmosphere provides a potential solution to the growing energy shortage. Leveraging the synergistic inspiration from desert beetles, cactus spines, and rice leaves, here, a multibioinspired hybrid wetting rod (HWR) is prepared through simple solution immersion and laser etching, which endows an efficient water collection from the atmosphere. Importantly, benefiting from the bionic asymmetric pattern design and the three-dimensional structure, the HWR possesses an omnidirectional fog collection with a rate of up to 23 g cm h.

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Water evaporation-induced electricity generators are considered a promising green energy-harvesting technology to alleviate the increasingly serious fossil energy crisis. Previous water evaporation-induced electricity generators mainly focused on single component carbon black, limiting the improvements in energy output. At present, there are relatively few studies on multi-component carbon black for improving electricity-generation performance.

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Contactless bubble manipulation with a high spatiotemporal resolution brings a qualitative leap forward in a variety of applications. Despite considerable advances, light-induced bubble maneuvering remains challenging in terms of robust transportation, splitting and detachment. Here, a photopyroelectric slippery surface (PESS) with a sandwich structure is constructed to achieve the versatile bubble manipulation.

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The smart control of droplet transport through surface structures and external fields provides exciting opportunities in engineering fields of phase change heat transfer, biomedical chips, and energy harvesting. Here we report the wedge-shaped slippery lubricant-infused porous surface (WS-SLIPS) as an electrothermal platform for active droplet manipulation. WS-SLIPS is fabricated by infusing a wedge-shaped superhydrophobic aluminum plate with phase-changeable paraffin.

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Spatiotemporally controllable droplet manipulation is essential in diverse applications, ranging from thermal management to microfluidics and water harvesting. Despite considerable advances, droplet manipulation without surface or droplet pretreatment is still challenging in terms of response and functional adaptability. Here, a droplet ultrasonic tweezer (DUT) based on phased array is proposed for versatile droplet manipulation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Engineering surfaces that efficiently separate oil from water is crucial for various applications, like treating oily wastewater and managing oil spills.
  • Recent advancements in biomimetics and manufacturing have improved the design of special materials with unique wettability properties for this purpose.
  • The review explores theories of wettability, different separation techniques (filtration, adsorption, etc.), and outlines current challenges and future research directions in developing these separation technologies.
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Guided drop transport is of great importance in various water and thermal management technologies. Unidirectional drop transport on a hot surface has been widely developed, but a bidirectional reversal is still challenging. Here, we report a steerable transport of drop impinging on heated concentric microgroove arrays, on which the directionality of drop transport is dictated by the drop boiling modes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers improved coalescence-induced drop jumping by designing millimeter-sized circular grooves, enhancing energy conversion efficiency to 43.5%, significantly higher than traditional methods.
  • They achieved the ability to control the jumping direction of droplets from 90° to 60° without affecting efficiency by adjusting the groove's curvature.
  • This innovative approach has potential applications in areas like water harvesting, anti-icing, and self-cleaning technologies.
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