Tong Li

North Dakota State University | NDSU

Natural gas hydrates (NGHs) hold immense potential as a future energy resource and for sustainable applications such as gas capture and storage. Due to the challenging formation conditions, however, their...

Mechanically softening materials have been intensively investigated to reduce ice adhesion strength based on the adhesion failure mechanism. Achieving icephobic surfaces with both low ice adhesion strength and mechanical robustness is challenging. The surface stiffening-induced stress concentration sites on elastomer should be possible to improve t...

Enabling surfaces with passive anti-icing properties is an emerging, facile, economical, and energy-saving strategy to mitigate the harm caused by ice accretion. However, the combination of icephobicity and robustness remains a daunting challenge. Herein, we present an ultra-robust transparent icephobic coating with high toughness, strong substrate...

Understanding the interfacial mechanical properties between hydrate and solids is vital to designing and fabricating surfaces for hydrate management. Herein, the role of the surface wettability, the type of solid substrate and temperature on the interfacial adhesion properties of tetrahydrofuran (THF) hydrate and ice were examined by force analysis...

Clathrate hydrates recently find important practical applications in the capture and recovery of greenhouse gases, cold storage and refrigeration systems. Nevertheless, their properties at microscopic scale remains largely insufficient yet. Herein, the structure and stability of clathrate hydrates encapsulating fluorinated methane derivatives under...

Ice accretion on exposed surfaces is unavoidable as time elapses and temperature lowers sufficiently in nature, causing detrimental impacts on the normal performance of devices and facilities. To mitigate icing problems, both active de-icing and passive anti-icing materials (AIM) have been utilized. Traditional active anti-icing methods suffer from...

Water-rich hydrogels find a wide range of promising applications due to their combined solid/liquid-like properties. However, hydrogels often exhibit a short lifespan and suffer from functional failure due to water depletion via rapid evaporation and icing/freezing under low temperatures. To tackle these challenges, here we developed a Ca²⁺ and hyd...

Natural gas hydrates (NGHs) are rising as an unconventional energy resource. The fundamental thermal characteristics of NGHs are of importance for natural gas exploitation from permafrost and oceanic sediments that are geomechanically deformed. Here, utilizing classic molecular dynamics simulations with all-atom (AA) and coarse-grained (CG) models...

Clathrate hydrate (CH) structures find diversely promising applications such as gas and energy storage and transport, carbon capture and storage, gas separation, water desalination, and food and pharmaceutical engineering. However, the influence of guest molecules on their properties remains largely uncharacterized. Here, the critical roles of mono...

Gel materials have drawn great attention recently in the anti-icing research community due to their remarkable potential for reducing ice adhesion, inhibiting ice nucleation, and restricting ice propagation. Although the current anti-icing gels are in their infancy and far from practical applications due to poor durability, their outstanding prospe...

Fundamental mechanics of gas hydrates is of importance to evaluating geomechanical and geotechnical properties of gas hydrate deposits, but it remains largely unexplored yet due to insufficient direct experimental techniques and high-quality of gas hydrate samples. Here, classic molecular dynamic (MD) simulations are used to study the fracture mech...

Current synthetic elastomers suffer from the well‐known trade‐off between toughness and stiffness. By a combination of multiscale experiments and atomistic simulations, a transparent unfilled elastomer with simultaneously enhanced toughness and stiffness is demonstrated. The designed elastomer comprises homogeneous networks with ultrastrong, revers...

Despite the remarkable advances in mitigating ice formation and accretion, however, no engineered anti-icing surfaces today can durably prevent frost formation, droplet freezing and ice accretion in an economical and eco-friendly way. Herein, sustainable and low-cost electrolyte hydrogel (EH) surfaces are developed by infusing salted water into the...

Multifunctional nanocoatings with mechanical robustness, high transparence, antifogging and self-cleaning have attracted significant attention because of their wide applications in glass-related fields. However, it is still very difficult to construct this kind of multifunctional nanocoatings due to the requirement of their comprehensive structure...

Excessive ice accretion on infrastructures can lead to severe damage and dysfunction. In the context of combating the build-up of unwanted icing and at the same time maintaining sunlight transmission, for instance on solar panels, windows and sensors, mechanically durable and transparent icephobic coatings are highly desired. Herein, we design and...

The limited durability of slippery lubricant-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) restricts their practical applications. Inspired by the epidermal glands of skins, we developed a facile approach to durable SLIPS with gland-like storage and release functions for icephobicity. By introducing a hybrid surfactant as a lubricant into the polydimethylsiloxan...

Slide-ring crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is designed and prepared for anti-icing/deicing application. Compared with the covalent crosslinks, the slidable crosslinks enhance the mobility of polymer networks and endow the materials with low elastic modulus. PDMS matrix guarantees the hydrophobicity of as-prepared coatings. These properties...

Unprecedented in situ formation of artificial moth-eye structure is demonstrated by spontaneous nano-phase separation of a silica-based system on substrate. The moth-eye thin film with a homogenously distributed nipples array shows broadband antireflection functionalities. The mechanism of nano-phase separation is unveiled as spinodal decomposition...

As traditional barriers are vulnerable to organic solvents or surfactants, a new fluoroalkyl-silica barrier with superior confining ability was developed for paper-based analytical devices (PADs). The as-prepared fluoroalkyl-silica barrier is able to contain surfactant solutions and pure organic solvents even alcohols. Based on the fluoroalkyl-sili...

A self-cleaning function is the capability of a material to maintain its contamination-free surface, avoiding the deposition of dirt. Quite a few self-cleaning surfaces have been found in nature that provide inspiration for fabricating various biomimicking artificial surfaces. In this chapter, we review the structure, performance and principle of t...

A paper-based hydrophobic/lipophobic surface with high liquid drop adhesion capable of carrying out sensitive biochemical assays directly is reported. Hydrophobic sol-gel derived fluoroalkyl-silica is used to develop the hydrophobic/lipophobic surface, which demonstrates superior confining abilities. The reported hydrophobic/lipophobic surface coul...

Broadband high transmittance, humidity resistance and mechanical robustness are three important aspects that dictate the practical applications of antireflective thin films. However, it has proved difficult to harness these properties. In the current work, hybrid thin films with hydrophobic groups in the film framework were prepared from acid catal...

Antireflective coatings on polymer substrates have received significant attention for their potential applications. In this paper, robust microporous antifogging antireflective coatings on polymer substrates were prepared from acid-catalyzed silica sol followed by hydrochloric acid vapor solidification at mild temperature below glass transition tem...

We prepared cellulose/silver nanocomposite fibers by soaking the cellulose fibers in AgNO3 aqueous solution, which was heated at 80 °C for 24 h to synthesize Ag nanoparticles in situ. The structure and properties of the composite fibers were characterized by FT-IR, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmitting electron m...

Superhydrophobic self-cleaning antireflective coatings were fabricated on Fresnel lenses by integrating solid silica nanoparticles (SSNs) and stearic acid (STA) and 1H,1H,2H,2H-perflurooctyltriethoxysilane (POTS) co-modified hollow silica nanoparticles (SPHSNs) via spin- and spray-assembly without any high temperature pre- or post-treatment. Transm...