Dehumidifier and condenser applications (where water is condensed onto a chilled surface) are common in power plants, desalination plants, chillers and heat exchangers. In these applications, condensation can be enhanced with an alternating hydrophilic-hydrophobic pattern on the condensation surface. This patterning has been implemented using polymers, self-assembled monolayers and other non-conducting materials. These approaches create chemically heterogeneous surfaces that have limited lifetimes -- due to the thickness and durability of the film.To address this situation, researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a surface with alternating hydrophilic-hydrophobic patterning that promote dual and simultaneous modes of condensation -- filmwise and sustained dropwise condensation -- on a chemically homogenous conducting material (metal substrate) -- which is the material of choice for condenser applications. This innovation is achieved with a practical and scalable technique of surface machining or roughening based on the preferred dimensions of the pattern. The resulting chemically homogenous, conductive substrate is important for maintaining a substrate with high thermal conductivity and doesn't add any thermal resistance that would impede the condensation heat transfer.   (more...)

Disinfection of water, plants, skin and wounds is critical for public health, horticulture, and medicine.  Current disinfection methods are relatively expensive, large in size and complexity, and typically require toxic chemicals. Plasma-generated reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) in air or other gases at or near room temperature are known to have antimicrobial and other biological and materials processing activity through direct interactions or indirectly via liquid phase applications.  However, these methods currently have serious limitations to broader applications.To address this challenge, University of California investigators have developed improved antimicrobial atmospheric pressure plasmas.  These new antimicrobial atmospheric pressure plasmas significantly enhance the efficacy of currently available systems by combining these species with a separate source of photons. In particular, ultraviolet (UV) photons have been shown by the investigators to greatly increase the antimicrobial effectiveness of plasma-generated ROS/RNS.  These antimicrobial atmospheric pressure plasmas can be used for water, surface, skin and wound disinfection.  The improved antimicrobial atmospheric pressure plasmas create chemically active species in gases or standard atmospheric pressure plasmas with photons, such ultraviolet wavelengths.  These improved antimicrobial atmospheric pressure plasmas combines the open-gas atmospheric pressure plasma to generate radicals and other reactive species with separate photon sources, such as LEDs, to generate UV and visible wavelength photons to interact synergistically with the chemical radicals.  This combination results in novel power and control for important applications exploiting reactive chemical species. Additionally, these improved antimicrobial atmospheric pressure plasmas use relatively inexpensive and simple devices, relatively small amounts of electricity, air and water. The chemical species created are relatively innocuous.  (more...)

Prior to this invention, if increased fruiting body size was desired, multiple generations of plants had to be carefully bred to produce larger fruits with success far from certain. Research at UC San Diego regarding the regulation of flowering genes has uncovered a control point in fruiting body expression. When under the control of a constitutive or regulated promoter for this gene, a transgenic plant with greatly enlarged fruit results. Many kinds of significant commercial crops may now be induced to produce far larger than normal fruiting bodies, apparently, with no loss in fruit quality. (more...)

Breakthrough in microencapsulation proven to provide core systems with excellent protection against oxidation using protein based agents which allow solubility at a very wide range of pH thus providing opportunities for applications in both acid and high-pH systems. (more...)

Automated Biosensor for Measurement of Urea and Other Biochemicals (more...)