Background As heatwaves become more frequent and intense, personal cooling becomes increasingly important for sustaining outdoor activities and for individuals without access to air conditioning. For about one-third of the current global population living in dry lands, evaporating water from clothing is the simplest, safest, most cost-effective, and...

Advancements in technology have allowed modern machines to have powerful computing in small integrated circuits. As the size of these integrated circuits decrease, thermal loads increase due to densely packed features contained within these integrated circuits. Air gaps in the integrated circuit between components, such as processors and heat sinks...

Aeronautics has grown exponentially within the past century and innovations within the have propelled an assortment of industries forward. Unfortunately, even though flight is the safest form of travel, there are still present dangers. Snow, ice, and frost formation on aircraft exteriors are known to have caused numerous aviation accidents. This problem...

Mission oriented protective posture (MOPP) gear is a type of clothing worn by soldiers for protection in toxic environments. The gear prevents transport of chemical and biological agents with nonporous polymeric coatings. However, the coatings block evaporative cooling through sweating, along with conductive, convective, and radiative cooling, which...

Water vapor condensation is an essential aspect of many technologies in energy generation, desalination, and air conditioning. An increased heat transfer rate during water vapor condensation could lead to considerable economic savings as well as environmental benefits. Hydrophobization improves heat transfer by switching the condensation mode from filmwise...

Frost and ice accumulation are major safety and performance concerns for aircraft, sea vessels, wind turbines, and off-shore oil platforms. A common and effective way to prevent ice buildup is to apply chemicals that lower the freezing temperature of water. In wintery conditions antifreeze is routinely sprayed on commercial airliners, and smaller planes...

Stretchable conductors have a variety of applications in flexible electronics, soft robotics, and biomedical devices. Room-temperature liquid metals can be used to create circuits that are intrinsically soft and remain functional even when stretched to several times their initial length. Traditional methods of manufacturing liquid metal structures are...

Contact angle goniometers measure the angle between the edge of a liquid droplet and the (liquid or solid) surface it’s on in order to analyze relevant properties of the liquid and surface. The device consists of a pipette fastened over an adjustable 3-axis sample stage, whose backlit image is captured and processed by a super speed digital camera...