Unusual Temperature Dependence of Water Sorption in Semicrystalline Hydrogels
Name
Advanced Materials - 2023 - Liu - Unusual Temperature Dependence of Water Sorption in Semicrystalline Hydrogels.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.78 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3d7c0ca3e89cd96b43184c2a7656343e
Author(s)
Liu, Xinyue
Zhang, Lenan
El Fil, Bachir
Díaz‐Marín, Carlos D
Zhong, Yang
Li, Xiangyu
Lin, Shaoting
Wang, Evelyn N
Date Issued
June 2023
Journal
Advanced Materials
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Liu, Xinyue, Zhang, Lenan, El Fil, Bachir, Díaz‐Marín, Carlos D, Zhong, Yang et al. 2023. "Unusual Temperature Dependence of Water Sorption in Semicrystalline Hydrogels." Advanced Materials, 35 (22).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Water vapor sorption is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature and plays an important role in various applications, including humidity regulation, energy storage, thermal management, and water harvesting. In particular, capturing moisture at elevated temperatures is highly desirable to prevent dehydration and to enlarge the tunability of water uptake. However, owing to the thermodynamic limit of conventional materials, sorbents inevitably tend to capture less water vapor at higher temperatures, impeding their broad applications. Here, an inverse temperature dependence of water sorption in poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogels, where their water uptake can be doubled with increasing temperature from 25 to 50 °C, is reported. With mechanistic modeling of water–polymer interactions, this unusual water sorption is attributed to the first‐order phase transformation of PEG structures, and the key parameters for a more generalized strategy in materials development are identified. This work elucidates a new regime of water sorption with an unusual temperature dependence, enabling a promising engineering space for harnessing moisture and heat.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202211763
