Event Date
Friday, 5 December 2025 4:00 pm ~ 5:30 pm
Speaker
Professor. Gang Chen
（Professor of Power Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A.）
Title
“Liquid-Liquid Encapsulation: A game-changing Technology”
Abstract
In recent years, experiments from different groups have reported that evaporation under sunlight from hydrogels and other porous materials can exceed the thermal evaporation limit by several times, i.e., super-thermal. We hypothesize that photons can directly cleave off water clusters at the liquid-vapor interface in a way similar to the photoelectric effect, which we call the photomolecular effect. We carried out experiments on different materials to exam this effect. We suggest that the photomolecular effect is responsible for a long-time puzzle in atmospheric science: experiments reported more cloud absorption than theory could predicts; and may also be related to why plants evolved to reject more green light since we observe that the photmolecular effect peaks at green light. Progress in theoretical description of the photomolecular effect will also be summarized. Our study suggests that the photomolecular effect should happen widely in nature, from clouds to fogs, ocean to soil surfaces, and plant transpiration, and can also lead to new applications in energy and clear water.
Chair
Prof. Koji Miyazaki
(Multiscale Science and Engineering for Energy and the Environment Thrust)
Language
English
