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New Material Could Harvest Water All Day Long
Micro-engineered, bioinspired design allows the material to collect moisture from cool fog as well as generating and collecting steam under sun
Tiny structures inspired by the shape of cactus spines allow a newly created material to gather drinkable water from the air both day and night, combining two water-harvesting technologies into one.
The material, a micro-architected hydrogel membrane (more on that later), can produce water through both solar steam-water generation and fog collection-two independent processes that typically require two separate devices. A paper about the material was published in Nature Communications on May 14.
Azul will help enable ‘society’s additively manufactured future,’ Greer said
(SKOKIE, Ill.) NEWS: Nanotechnology and 3D-printing pioneer Julia Greer has joined the advisory board of Azul 3D. Greer is the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, where she also directs the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. In her research, Greer creates 3D micro- and nano-architected materials using 3D printing and nanofabrication.
A world-renowned scientist and engineer, Greer has been recognized by numerous awards, including being named one of CNN’s 2020 Visionaries.
“I am very excited to be a part of the advisory board of such a creative and forward-thinking company,” Greer said. “The processes and products of Azul 3D are fundamentally new and transformative. They resonate with my own research passion for nano- and micro-architected materials and provide a powerful platform for enabling our soc