Title: Engineering Functional Surfaces for a Sustainable Future
Time: 15:00 to 17:00, Friday, August.18, 2023
Place: F310, School of Mechanical Engineering
Host: HE Qingbo, Professor (Institute of Vibration, Shock & Noise)

Biography
Dr. Bei Fan completed her postdoc training at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in June 2021. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University. Her research interests cover broad areas including thermal fluid science, microfluidic devices, electrokinetics, energy conversion and harvesting, desalination, and micro/nano fabrication. Her work has been published on high-reputation journals such as Nature Communications, Langmuir and Physics Review Letters and reported by public media including Science Daily, Phys.org, Physics Today, etc. She was awarded with NSF grant award. 

Abstract
Water is ubiquitous on earth and is also a renewable energy source. Electrokinetic flow, which can generate streaming potential and streaming current through the flow of an electrolyte over a charged surface, cab be used for energy harvesting. However, the yielded low energy conversion of electrokinetic flow on flat surface and superhydrophobic surfaces limited its practical applications. Here, I will first present that enhanced streaming potential can be obtained through the flow of salt water on slippery liquid-filled surfaces to harness both of the electrolyte slip and associated surface charges. The highest figure of merit, in terms of the voltage generated per unit applied pressure, of 0.043 mV/Pa is obtained. I will also show the tunability of streaming potential by changing the geometry of liquid-filled surface and the properties of filled liquid. These results lay the basis for innovative surface engineering methodology for the study of electrokinetic phenomena at the microscale with possible application in new electrical power sources.