Evaporation in nano/molecular materials

Thin Conducting Films: Preparation Methods, Optical and Electrical Properties, and Emerging Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

Thin conducting films are distinct from bulk materials and have become prevalent over the past decades as they possess unique physical, electrical, optical, and mechanical characteristics. Comprehending these essential properties for developing novel materials with tailored features for various applications is very important. Research on these conductive thin films provides us insights into the fundamental principles, behavior at different dimensions, interface phenomena, etc. This study comprehensively analyzes the intricacies of numerous commonly used thin conducting films, covering from the fundamentals to their advanced preparation methods. Moreover, the article discusses the impact of different parameters on those thin conducting films' electronic and optical properties. Finally, the recent future trends along with challenges are also highlighted to address the direction the field is heading towards. It is imperative to review the study to gain insight into the future development and advancing materials science, thus extending innovation and addressing vital challenges in diverse technological domains.

Physicochemical Perspective of Biological Heterogeneity

The vast majority of chemical processes that govern our lives occur within living cells. At the core of every life process, such as gene expression or metabolism, are chemical reactions that follow the fundamental laws of chemical kinetics and thermodynamics. Understanding these reactions and the factors that govern them is particularly important for the life sciences. The physicochemical environment inside cells, which can vary between cells and organisms, significantly impacts various biochemical reactions and increases the extent of population heterogeneity. This paper discusses using physical chemistry approaches for biological studies, including methods for studying reactions inside cells and monitoring their conditions. The potential for development in this field and possible new research areas are highlighted. By applying physical chemistry methodology to biochemistry in vivo, we may gain new insights into biology, potentially leading to new ways of controlling biochemical reactions.

Thermodynamic Analysis of Capillary and Electric Field Effects on Liquid-Vapor Equilibrium: A Study on the Water-Ethanol Mixture

This study investigates phase equilibrium manipulation in nonideal mixtures through a combined capillary and external electric field approach. Utilizing thermodynamic principles, an expression is established for estimating the equilibrium liquid mole fraction in a confined system subjected to a localized electric field within a capillary that is filled with a liquid phase in equilibrium with its vapor counterpart. Applied to a water-ethanol system, the model suggests large shifts in the equilibrium liquid mole fraction of water due to the electric field and capillary effects. These findings reveal that while the capillary's influence remains negligible for radii exceeding 10 nm, capillaries of smaller dimensions, when exposed to electric fields of around 300 MV/m, can amplify the equilibrium liquid water mole fraction by up to 55%. This suggests the potential for phase equilibrium control through larger capillaries and lower electric fields, while intriguing complexities arise at very small radii.

Evaporative and Wicking Functionalities at Hot Airflows of Laser Nano-/Microstructured Ti-6Al-4V Material

A novel multifunctional material with efficient wicking and evaporative functionalities was fabricated using hierarchical surface nano-/microstructuring by femtosecond laser micromachining. The created material exhibits excellent multifunctional performance. Our experiments in a wind tunnel demonstrate its good wicking and evaporative functionalities under the conditions of high-temperature airflows. An important finding of this work is the significantly enhanced evaporation rate of the created material compared with the free water surface. The obtained results provide a platform for the practical implementation of Maisotsenko-cycle cooling technologies for substantially increasing efficiency in power generation, thermal management, and other evaporation-based technologies. The developed multifunctional material demonstrates long-lasting wicking and evaporative functionalities that are resistant to degradation under high-temperature airflows, indicating its suitability for practical applications.

Numerical and Theoretical Analysis of Sessile Droplet Evaporation in a Pure Vapor Environment

The evaporation of sessile droplets is not only a common occurrence in daily life, but it also plays a vital role in many scientific and industrial fields. However, most of the current research is focused on the evaporation of droplets in the air environment, where vapor transport is controlled by the diffusion model, but when the droplet evaporation is in its own pure vapor environment, the above model will no longer apply, and the evaporation will be dominated by kinetic theory. Thus the Hertz–Knudsen model can be applied to describe the evaporation kinetics. However, in most of the studies, it is assumed that the temperature distribution is uniform along the vapor-liquid interface of the droplet, but due to the evaporative cooling effect, this assumption is not correct in actual evaporation. In this paper, theoretical analysis and numerical simulation were combined to study the characteristics of droplet evaporation with multiphysics coupling. In the theoretical model, heat conduction in the droplet and substrate was coupled with vapor transport at the droplet surface. In the numerical simulation, internal thermocapillary flow and heat transfer of the droplet were coupled with vapor transport at the droplet surface. The effects of contact angle, thermocapillary convection, ambient pressure ratio, and substrate superheat on the droplet evaporation characteristics were quantitatively analyzed. It was found that the high substrate superheat or low ambient pressure ratio will enhance the droplet thermocapillary convection as well as evaporation rate. Furthermore, a critical contact angle was found; below this value, the droplet evaporation rate was inversely proportional to the contact angle, but upon this value, the trend was reversed. These findings have important implications for revealing the physical mechanism of kinetics-controlled droplet evaporation in a pure vapor environment.