arXiv subjects

Fengchao Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Fengchao Wang.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Layer-by-layer water filling in molecular-scale capillaries

Under ambient humidity, water spontaneously condenses in pores only a few nanometers in size, making nanoscale capillarity central to numerous natural phenomena and technological applications. At these dimensions, water may no longer be treated as a continuous fluid, yet the consequences of molecular discreteness for capillary condensation and filling remain poorly understood. Here we study nanocapillaries fabricated by van der Waals assembly and, using atomic force microscopy, monitor their wall deformations during humidity-driven water uptake. We observe two distinct regimes: layer-by-layer filling of flexible capillaries and abrupt filling of rigid ones. Flexible walls deform in steps of ~3 Å, corresponding to the sequential entry of individual water molecular layers. The different filling regimes are explained by the competition between deformation energy and oscillatory wall-water interactions. Our findings show that the molecular discreteness of water can profoundly affect ubiquitous capillary phenomena, with wall compliance selecting between discrete and abrupt filling.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Tuneable ion selectivity in vermiculite membranes intercalated with unexchangeable ions

Membranes selective to ions of the same charge are increasingly sought for wastewater processing and valuable element recovery. However, while narrow channels are known to be essential, other membrane parameters remain difficult to identify and control. Here we show that Zr$^{4+}$, Sn$^{4+}$, Ir$^{4+}$, and La$^{3+}$ ions intercalated into vermiculite laminate membranes become effectively unexchangeable, creating stable channels, one to two water layers wide, that exhibit robust and tuneable ion selectivity. Ion permeability in these membranes spans five orders of magnitude, following a trend dictated by the ions' Gibbs free energy of hydration. Unexpectedly, different intercalated ions lead to two distinct monovalent ion selectivity sequences, despite producing channels of identical width. The selectivity instead correlates with the membranes' stiffness and the entropy of hydration of the intercalated ions. These results introduce a new ion selectivity mechanism driven by entropic and mechanical effects, beyond classical size and charge exclusion.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2024

Local well-posedness of strong solutions to the 2D nonhomogeneous primitive equations with density-dependent viscosity

In this paper, we consider the initial-boundary value problem of the nonhomogeneous primitive equations with density-dependent viscosity. Local well-posedness of strong solutions is established for this system with a natural compatibility condition. The initial density does not need to be strictly positive and may contain vacuum. Meanwhile, we also give the corresponding blow-up criterion if the maximum existence interval with respect to the time is finite.

math.AP↗

arXiv2024

Global existence and uniqueness of strong solutions to the 2D nonhomogeneous primitive equations with density-dependent viscosity

This paper is concerned with an initial-boundary value problem of the two-dimensional inhomogeneous primitive equations with density-dependent viscosity. The global well-posedness of strong solutions is established, provided the initial horizontal velocity is suitably small, that is, $\|\nabla u_{0}\|_{L^{2}}\leq η_{0}$ for suitably small $η_{0}>0$. The initial data may contain vacuum. The proof is based on the local well-posedness and the blow-up criterion proved in \cite{0}, which states that if $T^{*}$ is the maximal existence time of the local strong solutions $(ρ,u,w,P)$ and $T^{*}<\infty$, then \begin{equation*} \sup_{0\leq t<T^{*}}(\left\|\nabla ρ(t)\right\|_{L^{\infty}}+\left\|\nabla^{2}ρ(t)\right\|_{L^{2}}+\left\|\nabla u(t)\right\|_{L^{2}})=\infty. \end{equation*} To complete the proof, it is required to make an estimate on a key term $\|\nabla u_{t}\|_{L_{t}^{1}L_Ω^{2}}$. We prove that it is bounded and could be as small as desired under certain smallness conditions, by making use of the regularity result of hydrostatic Stokes equations and some careful time weighted estimates.

math.AP↗

arXiv2023

Beyond steric selectivity of ions using angstrom-scale capillaries

Ion-selective channels play a key role in physiological processes and are used in many technologies. While biological channels can efficiently separate same-charge ions with similar hydration shells, it remains a challenge to mimic such exquisite selectivity using artificial solid-state channels. Although, there are several nanoporous membranes that show high selectivity with respect to certain ions, the underlying mechanisms are based on the hydrated ion size and/or charge. There is a need to rationalize the design of artificial channels to make them capable of selecting between similar-size same-charge ions, which in turn requires understanding of why and how such selectivity can occur. To address this issue, we study angstrom-scale artificial channels made by van der Waals assembly, which are comparable in size with typical ions and carry little residual charge on channel walls. This allows us to exclude the first-order effects of steric and Coulomb-based exclusion. We show that the studied two-dimensional angstrom-scale capillaries can distinguish between same-charge ions with similar hydrated diameters. The selectivity is attributed to different positions occupied by ions within the layered structure of nanoconfined water, which depend on the ion-core size and differ for anions and cations. The revealed mechanism points at possibilities of ion separation beyond the simple steric sieving.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

DC electricity generation from dynamic polarized water-semiconductor interface

Liquid electricity generator and hydrovoltaic technology have received numerous attentions, which can be divided into horizontal movement generator and vertical movement generator. The horizontal movement generator is limited for powering the integrated and miniaturized energy chip as the current output direction is depending on the moving direction of the water droplet, which means a sustainable and continuous direct-current (DC) electricity output can be hardly achieved because of the film of limited length. On the other hand, the existing vertical movement generators include triboelectricity or humidity gradient-based liquid electricity generator, where the liquid or water resource must be sustainably supplied to ensure continuous current output. Herein, we have designed an integratable vertical generator by sandwiching water droplets with semiconductor and metal, such as graphene or aluminum. This generator, named as polarized liquid molecular generator (PLMG), directly converts the lateral kinetic energy of water droplet into vertical DC electricity with an output voltage of up to ~1.0 V from the dynamic water-semiconductor interface. The fundamental discovery of PLMG is related to the non-symmetric structure of liquid molecules, such as water and alcohols, which can be polarized under the guidance of built-in field caused by the Fermi level difference between metal and semiconductor, while the symmetric liquid molecules cannot produce any electricity on the opposite. Integratable PLMG with a large output power of ~90 nW and voltage of ~2.7 V has been demonstrated, meanwhile its small internal resistance of ~250 kilohm takes a huge advantage in resistance matching with the impedance of electron components. The PLMG shows potential application value in the Internet of Things (IoTs) after proper miniaturization and integration.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2017

Global weak solutions to 3D compressible Primitive equations with density-dependent viscosity

This paper is devoted to investigating the global existence of weak solutions for the compressible primitive equations (CPE) with damping term in a three-dimensional torus for large initial data. The system takes into account density-dependent viscosity. In our proof, we represent the vertical velocity as a function of the density and the horizontal velocity which will play a role to use the Faedo-Galerkin method to obtain the global existence of the approximate solutions. Motivated by Vasseur and Yu [yucheng2016], we obtain the key estimates of lower bound of the density, the Bresch-Desjardin entropy on the approximate solutions. Based on these estimates, using compactness arguments, we prove the global existence of weak solutions of CPE by vanishing the parameters in our approximate system step by step.

math.AP↗