The micro Flow and Interfacial Phenomena Conference held at UCSB
6/2025
We are thrilled to host the international micro Flow and Interfacial Phenomena (microFIP) conference from June 16th-18th at UCSB. This is a single-track conference with ~80 attendees. The next microFIP conference will be held at EPFL, Switzerland.
Congratulations for Xichen Liang for successfully defending her PhD thesis!
3/2025
Congratulations to Xichen for successfully defending her PhD! She will continue investigating surfactants by conducting R&D in Clorox in Pleasanton, CA. We will miss her.
Zhu group attended the Gordon Research Conference
1/2025
Our group attended the Gordon Research Conference "Micro and Nanoscale Phase Change Phenomena" in Pomona, CA.
Vijay's work published in Droplet
7/2024
Research Article “Heat transfer during droplet impact on a cold superhydrophobic surface via interfacial thermal mapping” led by Vijay Kumar featured on the front cover of journal Droplet, Vol. 3, Issue 3. We employ spatio-temporally resolved infrared thermography to investigate the effects of contact area and time on interfacial heat transfer as a droplet impacts a cold superhydrophobic surface. The contribution of heat transfer between the droplet and the surface during spreading stage is more than 60 %, highlighting the importance of reducing droplet spreading for anti-icing applications. Read more here.
Temperature heterogeneity causes Li leaching
7/2024
Research Article “In situ observation of thermally-activated and localized Li leaching from lithiated graphite” led by Harrison Szeto is published in ACS Energy Letters. We show that temperature heterogeneity can cause Li metal to leach out from lithiated graphite anodes even during battery resting conditions, highlighting the significance of uniform thermal environment for battery safety.
Zhu group receives ARPA-E IGNIITE funding
7/2024
Our group receives funding from ARPA-E through the IGNIITE (Inspiring Generations of New Innovators to Impact Technologies in Energy) program to develop a novel thermal desalination system with potential to double the energy efficiency of current thermal desalination systems. Read more here.
Photo-sensitive surfactants enables programmable droplet manipulation on surfaces
01/2024
Our group and collaborators Prof. Javier Read de Alaniz and Prof. Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz demonstrate the use of photo-sensitive surfactants with fast switching kinetics to manipulate droplet motion on liquid-infused surfaces and inside solid-wall microchannels. This work is published at ACS Central Science. Congratulations to graduate student Xichen Liang!
Transient Grating Spectroscopy reveals microscopic changes in battery
10/2023
We introduce Transient Grating Spectroscopy which probes surface acoustic waves to study lithium deposition process in batteries. We show that changes in the acoustic wave taken at different points during the lithium electrodeposition process strongly correlated with the stages of lithium growth. This work is published at Applied Physics Letters, highlighted by the editor and Scilight.
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Our experiment will be launched to the International Space Station
11/2022
We developed an experimental setup using light-sensitive surfactants to tune bubbles and droplets, which will be sent to the International Space Station on Nov. 6th to perform microgravity experiment. This is a collaborative research with Prof. Javier Read de Alaniz and Prof. Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz, both at UCSB. This work is sponsored by the ISS National lab and the NSF. Our industry partner is Space Tango.