Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Over the past decade, synthetic trees have beenengineered to mimic the transpiration cycle of natural plants, but theleaves are prone to dry out beneath a critical relative humidity. Here, wecreate large-area synthetic leaves whose transpiration process isremarkably stable over a wide range of humidities, even withoutsynthetic stomatal chambers atop the nanopores of the leaf. While thewater menisci cannot initially withstand the Kelvin stress of thesubsaturated air, they self-stabilized by locally concentrating vaporwithin the top layers of nanopores that have dried up. Transpirationrates were found to vary nonmonotonically with the ambient humiditybecause of the tradeoffof dry air increasing the retreat length of themenisci. It is our hope that thesefindings will encourage thedevelopment of large-area synthetic trees that exhibit excellent stabilityand high throughput for water-harvesting applications.