Surfaces designed so that drops do not adhere to them but instead bounce off have received substantial attention because of their ability to stay dry, self-clean and resist icing. A drop striking a non-wetting surface of this type will spread out to a maximum diameter and then recoil to such an extent that it completely rebounds and leaves the solid material. The amount of time that the drop is in contact with the solid--the 'contact time'--depends on the inertia and capillarity of the drop, internal dissipation and surface-liquid interactions. And because contact time controls the extent to which mass, momentum and energy are exchanged between drop and surface, it is often advantageous to minimize it. The conventional approach has been to minimize surface-liquid interactions that can lead to contact line pinning; but even in the absence of any surface interactions, drop hydrodynamics imposes a minimum contact time that was conventionally assumed to be attained with axisymmetrically spreading and recoiling drops. Here we demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the contact time below this theoretical limit by using superhydrophobic surfaces with a morphology that redistributes the liquid mass and thereby alters the drop hydrodynamics. We show theoretically and experimentally that this approach allows us to reduce the overall contact time between a bouncing drop and a surface below what was previously thought possible.

Hydrophobic materials that are robust to harsh environments are needed in a broad range of applications. Although durable materials such as metals and ceramics, which are generally hydrophilic, can be rendered hydrophobic by polymeric modifiers, these deteriorate in harsh environments. Here we show that a class of ceramics comprising the entire lanthanide oxide series, ranging from ceria to lutecia, is intrinsically hydrophobic. We attribute their hydrophobicity to their unique electronic structure, which inhibits hydrogen bonding with interfacial water molecules. We also show with surface-energy measurements that polar interactions are minimized at these surfaces and with Fourier transform infrared/grazing-angle attenuated total reflection that interfacial water molecules are oriented in the hydrophobic hydration structure. Moreover, we demonstrate that these ceramic materials promote dropwise condensation, repel impinging water droplets, and sustain hydrophobicity even after exposure to harsh environments. Rare-earth oxide ceramics should find widespread applicability as robust hydrophobic surfaces.

The Leidenfrost effect is undesirable in cooling applications as the vapor layer on which the liquid levitates acts as a heat transfer barrier. Here, we report on increasing the Leidenfrost temperature by surface textures that can promote droplet wetting at high superheat via capillary wicking. Counterintuitively, we find that sparser rather than denser textures increase the Leidenfrost temperature. Our experimental results are consistent with a physical model that balances capillary wetting pressures with dewetting pressures exerted by the escaping vapor. The physical mechanism suggests that hierarchical textures have a higher Leidenfrost temperature compared to single-length-scale textures, which is confirmed experimentally.

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There is an increasing need for the desalination of high concentration brine (>TDS 35,000 ppm) efficiently and economically, either for the treatment of produced water from shale gas/oil development, or minimizing the environmental impact of brine from existing desalination plants. Yet, reverse osmosis (RO), which is the most widely used for desalination currently, is not practical for brine desalination. This paper demonstrates technical and economic feasibility of ICP (Ion Concentration Polarization) electrical desalination for the high saline water treatment, by adopting multi-stage operation with better energy efficiency. Optimized multi-staging configurations, dependent on the brine salinity values, can be designed based on experimental and numerical analysis. Such an optimization aims at achieving not just the energy efficiency but also (membrane) area efficiency, lowering the true cost of brine treatment. ICP electrical desalination is shown here to treat brine salinity up to 100,000 ppm of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) with flexible salt rejection rate up to 70% which is promising in a various application treating brine waste. We also demonstrate that ICP desalination has advantage of removing both salts and diverse suspended solids simultaneously, and less susceptibility to membrane fouling/scaling, which is a significant challenge in the membrane processes.