Water

A serendipitous observation in a Chemical Engineering lab at Penn Engineering has led to a surprising discovery: a new class of nanostructured materials that can pull water from the air, collect it in pores and release it onto surfaces without the need for any external energy.

“We weren’t even trying to collect water,” says Lee. “We were working on another project testing the combination of hydrophilic nanopores and hydrophobic polymers when Bharath Venkatesh, a former Ph.D. student in our lab, noticed water droplets appearing on a material we were testing. It didn’t make sense. That’s when we started asking questions.”