Welcome
Welcome to the MIT Device Research Laboratory
(DRL) under the direction of Dr. Evelyn
Wang in the Mechanical
Engineering Department at MIT.
The DRL combines fundamental studies of micro and nanoscale heat and mass transport processes with the development of novel nanostructured materials to create innovative solutions in thermal management, thermal energy storage, solar thermal energy conversion, and water desalination. We leverage state-of-the-art micro/nanofabrication, unique measurement, and model prediction capabilities to enable mechanistic insights into complex fluid, interfacial, and thermal transport processes. This approach has led to new and important functionalities to enhance heat and mass transfer for various applications.
Recent News
03/30/2021: Congratulations to Lenan Zhang, Zhenyuan Xu, Lin Zhao, Bikram Bhatia, Yang Zhong, and Shuai Gong for a new review paper published in Energy & Environmental Science
Their work summarizes recent advances in passive
thermally-localized solar desalination. By analyzing the potential
of improving energy efficiency and reliability, this work provides
a roadmap for high-performance and commercially feasible solar
desalination technologies.
Read the paper
here!
03/26/2021: Bubble Growth and Departure Modes on Wettable/non-wettable Porous Foams in Alkaline Water Splitting
Congratulations to Ryuichi Iwata, Lenan Zhang, Kyle Wilke, Shuai
Gong, and their collaborators in professor Betar Gallant’s group
for their recent work on the bubble dynamics in gas-evolving
reactions, which was featured on MIT News! In this work, we report
the bubble dynamics and overpotential observed during alkaline
water splitting on a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) deposited
nickel porous electrode. A slight decrease in hydrophilicity
induced a drastic transition of bubble dynamics and a significant
increase of the transport overpotential. We show that the porous
electrode transitioned from a liquid-filled state to a gas-filled
state when varying the wettability, which changed the bubble
departure sizes and bubble coverage. As a result, there were
substantial changes of the transport overpotential. Our work
elucidates the fundamental relationship between wettability and
water splitting characteristics, which provides a practical
scenario for structuring the electrode for gas-evolving reactions.
Read more on MIT
News, and read the paper
here.
02/01/2021: Simple, solar-powered water desalination featured as Top MIT research stories of 2020 and covered by Scientific American
Congratulations to Zhenyuan Xu, Lenan Zhang, Lin Zhao, Bikram
Bhatia, Kyle Wilke, Youngsup Song and their collaborators in China
for their work on ultrahigh-efficiency solar-powered water
desalination featured as Top MIT research stories of 2020 on MIT
News and covered by Scientific American! This work demonstrated a
record-high solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency of 385% with a
production rate of 5.78 L m-2 h-1 using a low-cost and free-of-salt
accumulation multistage architecture. This work elucidates the
fundamental limit of the solar-to-vapor conversion process and
provides useful design guideline for existing passive solar thermal
desalination technologies. Image credits to MIT News.
Read more on MIT News,
Scientific American, and read the paper
here.
12/07/2020: Congratulations to Lenan Zhang for winning the best poster award at MRS 2020 Fall meeting
Congratulations to Lenan Zhang for winning the best poster award at
MRS 2020 Fall meeting!
Read more about his work on measuring thermal expansion coefficient
of 2D materials using micro-Raman spectroscopy here.
