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Kanike C, Lu Q, Wu H, Unsworth LD, Atta A, Zhang X. Plasmonic Nanostructures Grown from Reacting Droplet-In-Microwell Array on Flexible Films for Quantitative Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy in Plant Wearable In Situ Detection. ADVANCED MATERIALS (DEERFIELD BEACH, FLA.) 2024:e2405576. [PMID: 39039736 DOI: 10.1002/adma.202405576] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2024] [Revised: 06/20/2024] [Indexed: 07/24/2024]
Abstract
Plant wearable detection has garnered significant interest in advancing agricultural intelligence and promoting sustainable food production amidst the challenges of climate change. Accurately monitoring plant health and agrochemical residue levels necessitates qualities such as precision, affordability, simplicity, and noninvasiveness. Here, a novel attachable plasmonic film is introduced and designed for on-site detection of agrochemical residues utilizing surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). By functionalizing a thin polydimethylsiloxane film with silver nanoparticles via controlled droplet reactions in micro-well arrays, a plasmonic film is achieved that not only maintains optical transparency for precise analyte localization but also conforms closely to the plant surface, facilitating highly sensitive SERS measurements. The reliability of this film enables accurate identification and quantification of individual compounds and their mixtures, boasting an ultra-low detection limit ranging from 10-16 to 10-13 m, with mini mal relative standard deviation. To showcase its potential, on-field detection of pesticide residues on fruit surfaces is conducted using a handheld Raman spectrometer. This advancement in fabricating plasmonic nanostructures on flexible films holds promise for expanding SERS applications beyond plant monitoring, including personalized health monitoring, point-of-care diagnosis, wearable devices for human-machine interface, and on-site monitoring of environmental pollutants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chiranjeevi Kanike
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India
| | - Qiuyun Lu
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada
| | - Hongyan Wu
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada
| | - Larry D Unsworth
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada
| | - Arnab Atta
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India
| | - Xuehua Zhang
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada
- Physics of Fluids Group, Max Planck Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics, JM Burgers Center for Fluid Dynamics, Mesa+, Department of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Enschede, NB, 7522, The Netherlands
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2
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Kalita K, Zeng B, You JB, Li Y, Moyo A, Xu BB, Zhang X. Spontaneous Rise of Hydrogen Microbubbles in Interfacial Gas Evolution Reaction. SMALL (WEINHEIM AN DER BERGSTRASSE, GERMANY) 2024:e2400849. [PMID: 38644168 DOI: 10.1002/smll.202400849] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2024] [Revised: 03/08/2024] [Indexed: 04/23/2024]
Abstract
Liquid organic hydrogen carrier is a promising option for the transport and storage of hydrogen as a clean energy source. This study examines the stability and behavior of organic drops immobilized on a substrate during an interfacial hydrogen-evolution reaction (HER) at the drop surface and its surrounding aqueous solution. Hydrogen microbubbles form within the drop and rise to the drop apex. The growth rate of the hydrogen in-drop bubble increases with the concentration of the reactant in the surrounding medium. The drop remains stable till the buoyancy acting on the in-drop bubble is large enough to overcome the capillary force and the external viscous drag. The bubble spontaneously rises and carries a portion drop liquid to the solution surface. These spontaneous rising in-drop bubbles are detected in measurements using a high-precision sensor placed on the upper surface of the aqueous solution, reversing the settling phase from phase separation in the reactive emulsion. The finding from this work provides new insights into the behaviors of drops and bubbles in many interfacial gas evolution reactions in clean technologies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kangkana Kalita
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 1H9, Canada
| | - Binglin Zeng
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 1H9, Canada
- Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, 999077, China
| | - Jae Bem You
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehak-ro, Buk-gu, Daegu, 41566, Republic of Korea
| | - Yifan Li
- Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
| | - Anotidaishe Moyo
- Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
| | - Ben Bin Xu
- Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
| | - Xuehua Zhang
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 1H9, Canada
- Physics of Fluids Group and Max Planck Center for Complex Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands
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Zeng B, Yang H, Xu BB, Lohse D, Zhang X. Launching a Drop via Interplay of Buoyancy and Stick-Jump Dissolution. SMALL (WEINHEIM AN DER BERGSTRASSE, GERMANY) 2024; 20:e2303177. [PMID: 37726248 DOI: 10.1002/smll.202303177] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2023] [Revised: 08/22/2023] [Indexed: 09/21/2023]
Abstract
According to Archimedes' principle, a submerged object with a density lower than that of aqueous acid solution is more buoyant than a smaller one. In this work, a remarkable phenomenon is reported wherein a dissolving drop on a substrate rises in the water only after it has diminished to a much smaller size, though the buoyancy is smaller. The drop consisting of a polymer solution reacts with the acid in the surrounding, yielding a water-soluble product. During drop dissolution, water-rich microdroplets form within the drop, merging with the external aqueous phase along the drop-substrate boundary. Two key elements determine the drop rise dynamics. The first is the stick-jump behavior during drop dissolution. The second is that buoyancy exerts a strong enough force on the drop at an Archimedean number greater than 1, while the stick-jump behavior is ongoing. The time of the drop rise is controlled by the initial size and the reaction rate of the drop. This novel mechanism for programmable drop rise may be beneficial for many future applications, such as microfluidics, microrobotics, and device engineering where the spontaneous drop detachment may be utilized to trigger a cascade of events in a dense medium.
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Affiliation(s)
- Binglin Zeng
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 1H9, Canada
| | - Haichang Yang
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 1H9, Canada
- School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, China
| | - Ben Bin Xu
- Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
| | - Detlef Lohse
- Physics of Fluids Group, Max Planck Center for Complex Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, Enschede, 7500 AE, The Netherlands
- Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, 37077, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Xuehua Zhang
- Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, T6G 1H9, Canada
- Physics of Fluids Group, Max Planck Center for Complex Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, Enschede, 7500 AE, The Netherlands
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Othman AM, Poulos AS, Torres O, Routh AF. Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation Induced by Vapor Transfer in Evaporative Binary Sessile Droplets. LANGMUIR : THE ACS JOURNAL OF SURFACES AND COLLOIDS 2023; 39:13242-13257. [PMID: 37677134 PMCID: PMC10515642 DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c01686] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2023] [Revised: 08/21/2023] [Indexed: 09/09/2023]
Abstract
Drying of binary sessile droplets consisting of ethanol and octamethyltrisiloxane on a high-energy surface is investigated. During the process of evaporation, the droplets undergo liquid-liquid phase separation, resulting in the appearance of microdroplets at the liquid-air interface, which subsequently violently burst. This phase separation is attributed to water vapor transfer into the droplet, which modifies the solubility and leads to the formation of a ternary mixture. The newly formed ternary mixture may undergo nucleation and growth or spinodal decomposition, depending on the droplet composition path. By control of the relative humidity of air, phase separation can be mitigated or even eliminated. The droplets also display high mobility and complex wetting behavior due to phase separation, with two contracting and two spreading stages. The mass loss experiments reveal that the droplets undergo three distinct drying stages with an enhanced evaporation rate observed during the phase separation stage. A modified diffusion-limited model was employed to predict the evaporation rate, accounting for the physiochemical changes during evaporation and proved to be consistent with experimental observations. The findings of this work enhance our understanding of a coupled fundamental process involving the evaporation of multicomponent mixtures, wetting, and phase separation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ahmed M. Othman
- Department
of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Philippa Fawcett Dr, Cambridge CB3 0AS, U.K.
| | | | - Ophelie Torres
- Unilever
R & D Port Sunlight, Quarry Road East, Wirral CH63 3JW, U.K.
| | - Alexander. F. Routh
- Department
of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Philippa Fawcett Dr, Cambridge CB3 0AS, U.K.
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Abbasi N, Nunes JK, Pan Z, Dethe T, Shum HC, Košmrlj A, Stone HA. Flows of a nonequilibrated aqueous two-phase system in a microchannel. SOFT MATTER 2023; 19:3551-3561. [PMID: 37144458 DOI: 10.1039/d3sm00233k] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
Liquid-liquid phase separation is a rich and dynamic process, which recently has gained new interest, especially in biology and for material synthesis. In this work, we experimentally show that co-flow of a nonequilibrated aqueous two-phase system within a planar flow-focusing microfluidic device results in a three-dimensional flow, as the two nonequilibrated solutions move downstream along the length of the microchannel. After the system reaches steady-state, invasion fronts from the outer stream are formed along the top and bottom walls of the microfluidic device. The invasion fronts advance towards the center of the channel, until they merge. We first show by tuning the concentration of polymer species within the system that the formation of these fronts is due to liquid-liquid phase separation. Moreover, the rate of invasion from the outer stream increases with increasing polymer concentrations in the streams. We hypothesize the invasion front formation and growth is driven by Marangoni flow induced by the polymer concentration gradient along the width of the channel, as the system is undergoing phase separation. In addition, we show how at various downstream positions the system reaches its steady-state configuration once the two fluid streams flow side-by-side in the channel.
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Affiliation(s)
- Niki Abbasi
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | - Janine K Nunes
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | - Zehao Pan
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | - Tejas Dethe
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | - Ho Cheung Shum
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Andrej Košmrlj
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
- Princeton Materials Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
| | - Howard A Stone
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
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Numerical simulation of the Marangoni flow on mass transfer from single droplet with different Reynolds numbers. Colloids Surf A Physicochem Eng Asp 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.colsurfa.2022.128385] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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Roy T, Chaurasia SS, Cruz JM, Pimienta V, Parmananda P. Modes of synchrony in self-propelled pentanol drops. SOFT MATTER 2022; 18:1688-1695. [PMID: 35146497 DOI: 10.1039/d1sm01488a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
We report various modes of synchrony observed for a population of two, three and four pentanol drops in a rectangular channel at the air-water interface. Initially, the autonomous oscillations of a single 1-pentanol drop were studied in a ferroin DI water solution pre-mixed with some volume of pentanol. A pentanol drop performs continuous motion on the air-water interface due to Marangoni forces. A linear channel was prepared to study the uniaxial movement of the drop(s). Thereafter, a systematic study of the self-propelled motion of a 1-pentanol drop was reported as a function of the drop volume. Subsequently, the coupled dynamics were studied for two, three and four drops, respectively. We observed anti-phase oscillations in a pair of pentanol drops. In the case of three drops, relay synchronization was observed, wherein consecutive pairs of drops were exhibiting out-of-phase oscillations and alternate drops were performing in-phase oscillations. Four pentanol drops showed two different modes of synchrony: one was relay synchrony and the other was out-of-phase oscillations between two pairs of drops (within a pair, the drops exhibit in-phase oscillations).
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Affiliation(s)
- Tanushree Roy
- Department of Physics, IIT Bombay, Mumbai 400076, Maharashtra, India.
| | | | - José-Manuel Cruz
- Facultad de Ciencias en Física y Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas 29050, Mexico
| | - V Pimienta
- Laboratoire des IMRCP, Université de Toulouse, CNRS UMR 5623, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne 31062, Toulouse Cedex 9, France
| | - P Parmananda
- Department of Physics, IIT Bombay, Mumbai 400076, Maharashtra, India.
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Lopez de la Cruz R, Schilder N, Zhang X, Lohse D. Phase Separation of an Evaporating Ternary Solution in a Hele-Shaw Cell. LANGMUIR : THE ACS JOURNAL OF SURFACES AND COLLOIDS 2021; 37:10450-10460. [PMID: 34424709 PMCID: PMC8427745 DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c01274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2021] [Revised: 08/10/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
In the present work, we investigate the dynamic phenomena induced by solvent evaporation from ternary solutions confined in a Hele-Shaw cell. The model solutions consist of ethanol, water, and oil, and with the decrease in ethanol concentration by selective evaporation, they may undergo microdroplet formation via the ouzo effect or macroscopic liquid-liquid phase separation. We varied the initial concentration of the three components of the solutions. For all ternary solutions, evaporation of the good solvent ethanol from the gas-liquid interface, aligned with one side of the cell, leads to a Marangoni instability at the early stage of the evaporation process. The presence of the Marangoni instability is in agreement with our recent predictions based on linear stability analysis of binary systems. However, the location and onset of subsequent microdroplet formation and phase separation are the result of the interplay between the Marangoni instability and the initial composition of the ternary mixtures. We classified the ternary solutions into different groups according to the initial concentration of oil. For each group, based on the ternary diagram of the mixture, we offer a rationale for the way phase separation takes place and discuss how the instability influences droplet nucleation. Our work helps us to understand under what conditions and where droplet nucleation can take place when advection is present during phase separation inside a microfluidic device.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ricardo
Arturo Lopez de la Cruz
- Physics
of Fluids Group, Max-Planck-Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics,
Mesa+ Institute, and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, Faculty
of Science and Technology, University of
Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
| | - Noor Schilder
- Physics
of Fluids Group, Max-Planck-Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics,
Mesa+ Institute, and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, Faculty
of Science and Technology, University of
Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
| | - Xuehua Zhang
- Physics
of Fluids Group, Max-Planck-Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics,
Mesa+ Institute, and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, Faculty
of Science and Technology, University of
Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
- Department
of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University
of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1H9, Canada
| | - Detlef Lohse
- Physics
of Fluids Group, Max-Planck-Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics,
Mesa+ Institute, and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, Faculty
of Science and Technology, University of
Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
- Max
Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Am Faßberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
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