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Recently, lubricant-impregnated surfaces (LIS) have emerged as a promising condenser surface by facilitating the removal of condensates from the surface. However, LIS has the critical limitation in that lubricant oil is depleted along with the removal of condensates. Such oil depletion is significantly aggravated under high condensation heat transfer. Here we propose a brushed LIS (BLIS) that can allow the application of LIS under high condensation heat transfer indefinitely by overcoming the previous oil depletion limit. In BLIS, a brush replenishes the depleted oil via physical contact with the rotational tube, while oil is continuously supplied to the brush by capillarity. In addition, BLIS helps enhance heat transfer performance with additional route to droplet removal by brush sweeping. By applying BLIS, we maintain the stable dropwise condensation mode for > 48 hours under high supersaturation levels along with up to 61% heat transfer enhancement compared to hydrophobic surfaces.

Condensation frosting causes serious economic and safety problems in many industrial applications. Recently, lubricant-impregnated surfaces (LIS) have been attracting much interest with their excellent anti-frosting ability. The facilitated removal of drops due to the low contact angle hysteresis of LIS has been suggested as the frosting suppression mechanism. Here, we demonstrate a hitherto-unexplored microscale frosting suppression mechanism on LIS by investigating microscopic condensation and freezing dynamics on LIS by varying the viscosities of the lubricants. Based on the ice propagation model, we show that the frosting propagation is suppressed on LIS with a low viscosity oil where the coalescence of droplets is promoted by the presence of oil. On the contrary, the coalescence between droplets is interrupted on LIS with a high viscosity oil, which facilitates the frost propagation. The criteria for the delay of condensation frosting were explained based on the competition between the lubricant drainage time and the drop growth time scale. Finally, we verify that microscopic frosting suppression mechanism of LIS persists up to macroscopic level by demonstrating that LIS is effective in suppressing condensation frosting on heat exchangers.

Superhydrophobic (SHPo) surfaces can provide high condensation heat transfer due to facilitated droplet removal. However, such high performance has been limited to low supersaturation conditions due to surface flooding. Here, we quantify flooding resistance defined as the rate of increase in the fraction of water-filled cavities with respect to the supersaturation level. Based on the quantitative understanding of surface flooding, we suggest effective anti-flooding strategies through tailoring the nanoscale coating heterogeneity and structure length scale. Experimental verification is conducted using CuO nanostructures having different length scales combined with hydrophobic coatings with different nanoscale heterogeneities. The proposed anti-flooding SHPo can provide a ∼130% enhanced average heat transfer coefficient with ∼14% larger supersaturation range for droplet jumping compared to a previous CuO SHPo. The proposed anti-flooding parameter and the scalable SHPo will help develop high-performance condensers for real-world applications operating in a wide range of supersaturation levels.

We present the dynamic heat transfer analysis of condensed droplets growing and coalescing on hydrophobic (HPo) and superhydrophobic (SHPo) surfaces using a full 3D numerical simulation. In the model, two water droplets surrounded by fully-saturated water vapor grow on a horizontal surface through condensation until they coalesce together. The dynamic changes in the interfacial areas, temperature distributions and heat flux through each interface were analyzed. The effects of vapor phase temperature distribution, parasitic thermal resistance and surface flooding on the heat transfer rate are also quantified. The results show that a relatively high heat transfer rate through solid–vapor interface on SHPo partially compensates the low heat transfer rate through solid–liquid interface. The parasitic thermal resistance of the suggested SHPo may reduce the heat transfer performance over 30%. When the flooding occurs on HPo, the heat transfer rate rapidly decreases below a half of the value obtained at the beginning of coalescence. This work shows the importance of the heat transfer analysis considering dynamic changes in the interfacial area and resulting 3D temperature distributions, and will help develop the optimal condensation heat transfer surfaces.

Thermal interface materials (TIMs) with high thermal conductivity, fluidic characteristics, and surface wettability are crucial for the effective thermal management of high-power electronics. Gallium-based liquid metal (LM) can be a candidate for obtaining the purposes due to their thermo-physical properties. Several studies attempted to further increase the thermal conductivity of composites by adding conductive fillers. However, these efforts have been limited due to the oxidation and solidification issues at high vol% of fillers. In this work, we apply three strategies to obtain the enhanced thermal conductivity while maintaining the fluidity: 1) suppressing Ga-induced oxidation, 2) reducing the matrix-fillers interfacial resistance, and 3) forming additional heat-pathways within the LM matrix. An oxide-free ultrasonication-assisted particle internalization method has been developed, in which the copper nanoparticles (Cu NPs) are incorporated into the gallium-indium-tin (GaInSn) LM matrix. The fabricated composite shows ~180% enhancement of thermal conductivity (~64.8 Wm−1K−1) with only 4 vol% of nano-fillers compared to the untreated GaInSn. In the droplet impacting test, the synthesized GaInSn/Cu NPs composite presents almost identical spreading diameters with the untreated one, which confirms the maintained fluidity. The predicted thermal conductivity using the theoretical model, calculating the measured cluster fraction, is well-matched to the experimental data, which clarifies that the nanoparticle clusters created effective heat-pathways. A high-quality interface with a silicon substrate is confirmed by the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, demonstrating the presence of a thin-film Ga2O3 adhesion layer. In the cooling performance test, the developed TIM provides over 20% lower hot-spot temperature than that of the grease-type TIM at high heat flux regime (>150 W/cm2), showing excellent thermal stability over 230 cycles of acceleration test. This work will help develop high-performance TIMs, especially for high power density semiconductor applications.

Surface fouling by oil is a significant engineering issue by degrading the performance of various energy systems. Recently, it has been shown that nanostructured surfaces with the proper wettability can mitigate surface fouling against various types of organic or inorganic matter in aqueous environments. However, their effectiveness in suppressing surface fouling is questionable against low surface tension bio-oils, particularly when they are present in the form of emulsified oils. Here, we show that a surface fouling on the metallic substrate can be mitigated by nanostructuring the substrate, followed by additional surface treatment. With hydrophobization of nanostructured substrate, oil-fouling is reduced up to ∼ 48 % due to the reduced surface energy, although emulsified oil still sticks to the surface. Furthermore, with additional infusion of low surface tension lubricants, oil-fouling is significantly suppressed up to ∼ 88 % due to non-sticking property of the lubricant-infused substrate even to emulsified oils. Also, it is found that surface fouling is strongly dependent on the temperature due to the change of emulsion property with the temperature, which should be taken into account in practical settings. By proposing a practical solution to minimizing surface fouling by emulsified bio-oils, we believe that our results can help address a critical fouling issue in energy systems utilizing bio-oils.

Promoting dropwise condensation on condensers has the potential to significantly improve cooling and heat recovery performance of two-phase closed thermosyphons (TPCTs). If it is well designed, the dropwise condensation can provide an order of magnitude higher heat transfer coefficient than filmwise condensation of conventional metal condensers. The thermal design of an ideal dropwise condensing surface is so important in the rationale for the advantage of dropwise condensation in the TPCTs. However, the effect of the hydrophobic promoter thickness on the thermal characteristics of the TPCT and its optimal value are still unclear. Here, we develop a unified model framework for the TPCT with the dropwise condenser and investigate how much the dropwise condensation can improve the thermal performance of the TPCT. As the hydrophobic promoter for the TPCT, we proposed a nanoscopically smooth Teflon-based hydrophobic coating on theoretical insights, experimentally evaluated its condensation heat transfer, and then developed its dropwise model with high accuracy by combining a recent dropwise model with the optimized parameters. Subsequently, the developed model was unified with the TPCT model to investigate the thermal characteristics of the TPCT system and the effect of the promoter thickness. The model results show that the Teflon-coated condenser with a thin thickness (≤ 10 nm) can significantly reduce the overall thermal resistance of the TPCT by up to 4.5 times compared to filmwise condensation. However, an increase in film thickness limited the performance enhancement of the TPCT due to the dominant thermal resistance through the film. By considering both the durability and the thermal resistance of the TPCT, we suggested the optimal Teflon film thickness as approximately 60 nm. This work provides physical insights and guidelines to obtain ideal TPCTs combined with dropwise condensers.

A series of donor-acceptor (D–A) polymers with regioregularly incorporated a thieno[3,4-b]thiophene as a π-bridge between electron donor and electron acceptor segments were successfully synthesized for the first time. The optical, thermal, and electrochemical properties of the D–A polymers with the thieno[3,4-b]thiophene as a π-bridge were characterized by UV/vis spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and cyclic voltammetry measurements. They exhibited low energy bandgap because of extended π-conjugation length and increased electron density through conjugated polymer backbones. Moreover, they showed suitable HOMO and LUMO energy levels for photovoltaic applications. The bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaic devices based on the D–A polymers with the regioregularly incorporated thieno[3,4-b]thiophene segment exhibited about 10% higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) than the D–A polymer with thienyl segment as a π-bridge due to enhanced light harvesting ability and excellent nanoscale network. This study implies that the D–A polymers with the regioregularly incorporated thieno[3,4-b]thiophene segment as a π-bridge can achieve high PCE through structural modification of the polymers.

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The efficient water harvesting from air-laden moisture has been a subject of great interest to address world-wide water shortage issues. Recently, it has been shown that tailoring surface wettability can enhance the moisture harvesting performance. However, depending on the harvesting condition, a different conclusion has often been reported and it remains unclear what type of surface wettability would be desirable for the efficient water harvesting under the given condition. Here we compare the water harvesting performance of the surfaces with various wettability under two different harvesting conditions–dewing and fogging, and show that the different harvesting efficiency of each surface under these two conditions can be understood by considering the relative importance of the water capturing and removal efficiency of the surface. At fogging, the moisture harvesting performance is determined by the water removal efficiency of the surface with the oil-infused surfaces exhibiting the best performance. Meanwhile, at dewing, both the water capturing and removal efficiency are crucial to the harvesting performance. And well-wetting surfaces with a lower barrier to nucleation of condensates exhibit a better harvesting performance due to the increasing importance of the water capture efficiency over the water removal efficiency at dewing.