Hengan Wu

University of Science and Technology of China | USTC

Nanofluidics holds significant potential across diverse fields, including energy, environment, and biotechnology. Nevertheless, the fundamental driving mechanisms on the nanoscale remain elusive, underscoring the crucial importance of exploring nanoscale driving techniques. This study introduces a Laplace pressure‐driven flow method that is accurat...

Assembling ultrathin nanosheets into layered structure represents one promising way to fabricate high‐performance nanocomposites. However, how to minimize the internal defects of the layered assemblies to fully exploit the intrinsic mechanical superiority of nanosheets remains challenging. Here, we develop a dual‐scale spatially confined strategy f...

Constructing structural materials from sustainable raw materials is considered an efficient way to reduce the potential threat posed by plastics. Nevertheless, challenges remain regarding combining excellent mechanical and thermal properties, especially the balance of strength and toughness. Here, we report a 3D nanofiber network interfacial design...

Constructing structural materials from sustainable raw materials is considered an efficient way to reduce the potential threat posed by plastics. Nevertheless, challenges remain regarding combining excellent mechanical and thermal properties, especially the balance of strength and toughness. Here, we report a 3D nanofiber network interfacial design...

Monolayer two-dimensional (2D) materials possess excellent in-plane mechanical strength yet extremely low bending stiffness, making them particularly susceptible to instability, which is anticipated to have a substantial impact on their physical functionalities such as 2D-based Micro/Nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS), nanochannels, and proton...

Introducing natural Bouligand structure into synthetics is expected to develop high-performance structural materials. Interfibrous interface is critical to load transfer, and mechanical functionality of bioinspired Bouligand structure yet receives little attention. Here, we propose one kind of hierarchical and reconfigurable interfibrous interface...

The conventional fabrication of bulk van der Waals (vdW) materials requires a temperature above 1,000 °C to sinter from the corresponding particulates. Here we report the near-room-temperature densification (for example, ∼45 °C for 10 min) of two-dimensional nanosheets to form strong bulk materials with a porosity of <0.1%, which are mechanically s...

Interactions at the oil/brine/rock interfaces play a pivotal role in the mobility of crude oil within reservoir matrices. Unraveling the microscopic mechanisms of these interactions is crucial for ion-engineered water flooding in secondary and tertiary oil recovery. In this study, the occurrence and transport behavior of crude oil in kaolinite nano...

The short-range order and medium-range order of amorphous carbons demonstrated in experiments allow us to rethink whether there exist intrinsic properties hidden by atomic disordering. Here we presented six representative phases of amorphous carbons (0.1–3.4 g/cm3), namely, disordered graphene network (DGN), high-density amorphous carbon (HDAC), am...

Under the influence of the nonlinear fluid-solid coupling, hydraulic fracture exhibits various propagation modes (such as toughness-or viscosity-dominated), which stem from the competition between the solid deformation and fluid flow. Based on the homogeneous assumption, the basic theoretical analysis has divided toughness and viscosity scales in t...

The presence of fractures increases the difficulty of flow mechanisms analysis, and it remains unclear how fractures affect multiphase flow displacement in the layered rock matrix. Herein, a pore-scale imbibition model considering the layered matrix-fracture system is established using the phase-field method, where oil is displaced by a range of fl...

Polysaccharide-based membranes with excellent mechanical properties are highly desired. However, severe mechanical deterioration under wet conditions limits their biomedical applications. Here, inspired by the structural heterogeneity of strong yet hydrated biological materials, we propose a strategy based on heterogeneous crosslink-and-hydration (...

Gas permeation through nanopores is a long-standing research interest because of its importance in fundamental science and many technologies. The free molecular flow is conventionally described by Knudsen theory, under the diffuse reflection assumption. Recent experiments reported ballistic molecular transport of gases, which urges for the developm...

Understanding the slip behaviors on the graphene surfaces is crucial in the field of nanofluidics and nanofluids. The reported values of the slip length in the literature from both experimental measurements and simulations are quite scattered. The presence of low concentrations of functional groups may have a greater impact on the flow behavior tha...

CO2 sequestration and enhanced gas recovery (CS-EGR) of shale formation involve complex multi-physics couplings, which are still not precisely captured by recent models. In this regard, a modified model fully considering the fractal characterization of fracture networks and multi-physics coupled transport behaviors in multi-scale shale formation is...

The broad applications of ceramic materials in functional devices are often limited by their intrinsic brittleness. Amorphous boron nitride (a-BN), as a promising ceramic has shown high thermal stability and excellent dielectric properties that can be applied to microfabricated aerogel and nano dielectric layers, while its mechanical properties at...

It remains a challenge to artificially fabricate fibers with the macroscopic mechanical properties and characteristics of spider silk. Herein, a covalently cross-linked double-network strategy was proposed to disrupt the inverse relation of strength and toughness in the fabrication of ultratough and superstrong artificial polymer fibers. Our design...

Uncontrollable dendrite growth and side reactions resulting in short operating life and low Coulombic efficiency have severely hindered the further development of aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs). In this work, we designed to grow zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) uniformly on CuO nanosheets (NSs) and prepared carbon-coated CuZn alloy NSs...

The quest for widespread applications especially in extreme environments accentuates the necessity to design materials with robust mechanical and thermodynamic stabilities. Almost all existing materials yield temperature-variant mechanical properties, essentially determined by their different atomic bonding regimes. In general, weak non-covalent in...

Diverse ultrahigh-strength platelets offer immense promise for high-efficient energy-absorbing design of nacre-mimetic composites. Yet, incompatible interfacial bonding has greatly restricted the pull-out toughening efficiency to a superior level, resulting in insufficient utilization of platelet strength advantages. Herein, we demonstrate an ingen...

Lightweight and impact‐resistant materials with self‐monitoring capability are highly desired for protective applications, but are challenging to be artificially fabricated. Herein, a scalable‐manufactured aramid nanofiber (ANF)‐based composite combining these key properties is presented. Inspired by the strengthening and toughening mechanisms rely...

Multilayer van der Waals (vdW) materials exhibit nontrivial out-of-plane responses and deformability due to their inherent atomic scale thickness coupled with weak interlayer vdW interactions, which call for a general mechanical framework to quantify such extraordinary characteristics given the structure and material properties. Here, we demonstrat...

Although short bamboo nodes function in mechanical support and fluid exchange for bamboo survival, their structures are not fully understood compared to unidirectional fibrous internodes. Here, we identify the spatial heterostructure of the bamboo node via multiscale imaging strategies and investigate its mechanical properties by multimodal mechani...

Bouligand structures across several species invariably hold the mechanical foundation for the survival of living organisms. Transcribing them into synthetic analogues will promote the development of structural materials. Although superior nanofibers emerge continuously, arranging them into structurally and mechanically optimized biomimetic assembli...

This work presents the comprehensive review on the multiscale transport simulations of shale gas in micro-/nanoporous media from the molecular- to the pore-scale. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.0c03276

This research reveals the roughness factor-dependent transport, characteristic of shale gas through amorphous kerogen nanopores. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.0c02456