Bioinspired in Situ Growth of Conversion Films with Underwater Superoleophobicity and Excellent Self-Cleaning Performance

Wax deposition during the production and transportation of crude oil is a global problem in oil industries. Fabrication of underwater self-cleaning materials can provide a new strategy to prohibit wax deposition. In this paper, conversion films on carbon steel with hierarchical micro/nanostructure are fabricated through a novel in situ alternating-current deposition method. The flower-like conversion films are composed of amorphous iron phosphate and present superhydrophilicity in air and superoleophobicity underwater. The conversion films can efficiently prevent the deposition of wax in water-contained crude oil, showing excellent self-cleaning performance. This facile and low-cost fabrication of a self-cleaning film provides a good strategy for underwater–oil prevention

Bioinspired in Situ Growth of Conversion Films with Underwater Superoleophobicity and Excellent Self-Cleaning Performance

Wax deposition during the production and transportation of crude oil is a global problem in oil industries. Fabrication of underwater self-cleaning materials can provide a new strategy to prohibit wax deposition. In this paper, conversion films on carbon steel with hierarchical micro/nanostructure are fabricated through a novel in situ alternating-current deposition method. The flower-like conversion films are composed of amorphous iron phosphate and present superhydrophilicity in air and superoleophobicity underwater. The conversion films can efficiently prevent the deposition of wax in water-contained crude oil, showing excellent self-cleaning performance. This facile and low-cost fabrication of a self-cleaning film provides a good strategy for underwater–oil prevention

Rapid Reversible Superhydrophobicity-to-Superhydrophilicity Transition on Alternating Current Etched Brass

Reversible surface wetting behavior is a hot topic of research because of the potential engineering applications. In the present work, a hierarchical micro/nanostructure is fabricated on brass by alternate current (AC) etching. The superhydrophilic as-prepared etched brass (EB) turns into superhydrophobic after the modification of stearic acid for 1 min. After annealing at 350 °C for 5 min, the superhydrophobic modified EB surface becomes superhydrophilic again. Furthermore, the annealed EB can restore the superhydrophobicity with the remodification of stearic acid. The wetting transition is realized by stearic acid modification and annealing rapidly in 6 min. The wetting transition mechanism is discussed based on the surface chemical analysis. This method is facile and suitable for the construction of large-scale and complex brass surfaces with tunable wetting behaviors

Bioinspired in Situ Growth of Conversion Films with Underwater Superoleophobicity and Excellent Self-Cleaning Performance

Wax deposition during the production and transportation of crude oil is a global problem in oil industries. Fabrication of underwater self-cleaning materials can provide a new strategy to prohibit wax deposition. In this paper, conversion films on carbon steel with hierarchical micro/nanostructure are fabricated through a novel in situ alternating-current deposition method. The flower-like conversion films are composed of amorphous iron phosphate and present superhydrophilicity in air and superoleophobicity underwater. The conversion films can efficiently prevent the deposition of wax in water-contained crude oil, showing excellent self-cleaning performance. This facile and low-cost fabrication of a self-cleaning film provides a good strategy for underwater–oil prevention

Constructing Fluorine-Free and Cost-Effective Superhydrophobic Surface with Normal-Alcohol-Modified Hydrophobic SiO₂ Nanoparticles

Superhydrophobic coatings have drawn much attention in recent years for their wide potential applications. However, a simple, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly approach is still lacked. Herein, a promising approach using nonhazardous chemicals was proposed, in which multiple hydrophobic functionalized silica nanoparticles (SiO₂ NPs) were first prepared as core component, through the efficient reaction between amino group containing SiO₂ NPs and the isocyanate containing hydrophobic surface modifiers synthesized by normal alcohols, followed by simply spraying onto various substrates for superhydrophobic functionalization. Furthermore, to further improve the mechanical durability, an organic–inorganic composite superhydrophobic coating was fabricated by incorporating cross-linking agent (polyisocyanate) into the mixture of hydrophobic-functionalized SiO₂ NPs and hydroxyl acrylic resin. The hybrid coating with cross-linked network structures is very stable with excellent mechanical durability, self-cleaning property and corrosion resistance

Hybrid energy harvesting technology: From materials, structural design, system integration to applications

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd The last decade has witnessed significant advances in energy harvesting technology for the realization of self-charging electronics and self-powered wireless sensor nodes (WSNs). To conquer the energy-insufficiency issue of a single energy harvester, hybrid energy harvesting systems have been proposed in recent years. Hybrid harvesting includes not only scavenging energy from multiple sources, but also converting energy into electricity by multiple types of transduction mechanisms. A reasonable hybridization of multiple energy conversion mechanisms not only improves the space utilization efficiency but can also boost the power output significantly. Given the continuously growing trend of hybrid energy harvesting technology, herein we present a comprehensive review of recent progress and representative works, especially focusing on vibrational and thermal energy harvesters which play the dominant role in hybrid energy harvesting. The working principles and typical configurations for piezoelectric, electromagnetic, triboelectric, thermoelectric and pyroelectric transduction effects are briefly introduced. On this basis, a variety of hybrid energy harvesting systems, including mechanisms, configurations, output performance and advantages, are elaborated. Comparisons and perspectives on the effectiveness of hybrid vibrational and thermal harvesters are provided. A variety of potential application prospects of the hybrid systems are discussed, including infrastructure health monitoring, industry condition monitoring, smart transportation, human healthcare monitoring, marine monitoring systems, and aerospace engineering, towards the future Internet-of-Things (IoT) era

Facile Fabrication of Binary Nanoscale Interface for No-Loss Microdroplet Transportation

Binary nanoscale interfacial materials are fundamental issues in many applications for smart surfaces. A binary nanoscale interface with binary surface morphology and binary wetting behaviors has been prepared by a facile wet-chemical method. The prepared surface presents superhydrophobicity and high adhesion with the droplet at the same time. The composition, surface morphology, and wetting behaviors of the prepared surface have been systematic studied. The special wetting behaviors can be contributed to the binary nanoscale effect. The stability of the prepared surface was also investigated. As a primary application, a facile device based on the prepared binary nanoscale interface with superhydrophobicity and high adhesion was constructed for microdroplet transportation

Bioinspired Composite Coating with Extreme Underwater Superoleophobicity and Good Stability for Wax Prevention in the Petroleum Industry

Wax deposition is a detrimental problem that happens during crude oil production and transportation, which greatly reduces transport efficiency and causes huge economic losses. To avoid wax deposition, a bioinspired composite coating with excellent wax prevention and anticorrosion properties is developed in this study. The prepared coating is composed of three films, including an electrodeposited Zn film for improving corrosion resistance, a phosphating film for constructing fish-scale morphology, and a silicon dioxide film modified by a simple spin-coating method for endowing the surface with superhydrophilicity. Good wax prevention performance has been investigated in a wax deposition test. The surface morphology, composition, wetting behaviors, and stability are systematically studied, and a wax prevention mechanism is proposed, which can be calculated from water film theory. This composite coating strategy which shows excellent properties in both wax prevention and stability is expected to be widely applied in the petroleum industry

Electrodeposition of Polyporous Sn–Ni Coating in Deep Eutectic Solvents for Removing Organic Dyes

Materials with a high specific surface area including a porous structure have been widely researched due to the applicability in the adsorption of various organic dyes. However, further application of porous materials is limited by the complicated and expensive preparation process. Herein, a Sn–Ni coating with a polyporous structure is successfully prepared via a simple and high-efficiency electrodeposition approach in deep eutectic solvents (DESs). The prepared Sn–Ni coating exhibits a uniform polyporous structure with a diameter of 15 μm. Furthermore, the coating shows excellent adsorption capacity in the removal of acid grain black organic dyestuff. With the rise of preparation temperature from 85 to 105 °C, the electrochemical active surface area and the ratio of nickel increase, which further enhance dye adsorption capacity

Carbon-Based CsPbBr₃ Perovskite Solar Cells: All-Ambient Processes and High Thermal Stability

The device instability has been an important issue for hybrid organic–inorganic halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs). This work intends to address this issue by exploiting inorganic perovskite (CsPbBr₃) as light absorber, accompanied by replacing organic hole transport materials (HTM) and the metal electrode with a carbon electrode. All the fabrication processes (including those for CsPbBr₃ and the carbon electrode) in the PSCs are conducted in ambient atmosphere. Through a systematical optimization on the fabrication processes of CsPbBr₃ film, carbon-based PSCs (C-PSCs) obtained the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of about 5.0%, a relatively high value for inorganic perovskite-based PSCs. More importantly, after storage for 250 h at 80 °C, only 11.7% loss in PCE is observed for CsPbBr₃ C-PSCs, significantly lower than that for popular CH₃NH₃PbI₃ C-PSCs (59.0%) and other reported PSCs, which indicated a promising thermal stability of CsPbBr₃ C-PSCs