INTERFACIAL THERMAL MANIPULATION FOR WATER-ENERGY HARVESTING

Water and energy serve as the bedrock of social stability, economic growth, and human civilization worldwide. The need for clean water and energy technologies has never been more imperative in the post-pandemic era, given the gradual recovery of economic activities and human mobilities. Converting solar thermal energy or low-grade waste heat via efficacious heat harvesting technologies promises to offer clean water and energy with minimal environmental impacts. This thesis aims to explore interfacial heat transport and underlying multiphysics in multi-material systems for advancing sustainable water-energy harvesting through multiscale thermal manipulation. First, we discuss the potential and feasibility of upcycling low-grade heat based on thermal transport theory. We investigate the controllability of inhomogeneous water distribution/evaporation and thermal transport at non-flat water-air interfaces, enabling boosted solar vaporization and thermoelectric generation, respectively. We then transform nonplanar device topologies and field inhomogeneities into thermal and electrostatic profile co-modulation at dielectric-air and droplet interfaces for weather adaptive environmental energy harvesting with a two-fold increase in output power. Moreover, we delve into the understanding of thermal field nonlinearity and decoupling of interfacial heat localization-propagation in transverse pyroelectrics, thus achieving a five-fold increment in power density for temporal heat harvesting. Additionally, we demonstrate spatial heat harvesting with technoeconomic sustainability and scalable production potential by harnessing non-unity flexible thermoelectrics and geometric heat transport. Finally, we summarize the contributions made in this thesis and suggest future research directions.

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