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About Wai
Wai Hnin Oo
Artist: Akayi Thein
I was born in Myanmar (that's where the difficult name comes from). I lived in sunny Singapore for 8 years. At 16 years old, I moved to California with my family.
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I'm passionate about science and food. I will spend about 5 years of my life, happily learning and struggling for science. In my free time, I whip up healthy and unhealthy dishes for myself.
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Where I went to school
I studied at Skyline College for 2 years before transferring to UC Irvine in 2017.
I graduated from UC Irvine with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2019.
I am currently a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Merced (2019–present).
What I do in the lab
I study a phenomenon called "superlubricity," a special state where friction between two surfaces vanishes.
How is it possible for friction to vanish?
Realistically, it's not possible for friction to be completely zero, and it would not be possible to measure zero friction even with the latest instruments. But we can reduce friction to near-zero values––through superlubricity. For comparison, a tire on ice has a friction coefficient of 0.2 while the upper limit for superlubricity is 0.01.
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The main idea behind "superlubricity" is that, two surfaces that do NOT mesh well with each other will slide against each other easily. The egg crates in position 1 cannot slide easily because their hills and valleys are locked together. But if you rotate the eggs crates against each other like in position 2, they can now slide easily. If we apply this concept at an atomic level, we can get near-zero friction values, about 20 times more slippery than tires on ice!
Position 1
Egg crates can NOT slide easily.
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Position 2
Egg crates CAN slide easily!
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Why don't we see this "superlubric" behavior in daily life? It's because "superlubricity" does require some special conditions: materials that do not like to interact with each other and extremely clean surfaces without contaminant molecules. These conditions do limit the appearance of this interesting phenomenon. But recently, thanks to the invention of a few fancy microscopes (AFM, STM, SEM), scientists have made significant progress in proving this concept in real-life experiments, with friction coefficients as low as 0.004 measured. That's 50 times more slippery than tires on ice!
Images from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlubricity.
Our lab already has a material system that's proven to be "superlubric" at ambient (i.e. normal) conditions. My job is to figure out the physical limits where this behavior persists, so that this phenomenon can be applied in real life applications for super efficient machines!
What do you think about this phenomenon? Is it too much? Too far-fetched?
As for me, I was immediately hooked by this idea since I first learned of it. As impossible as it may seem, I believe there will be ways to eventually apply this concept in industrial applications. I believe there can be devices with astoundingly low friction in future. At this time, scientists still need to understand this phenomenon more deeply through various simulations and experiments.
During my PhD, I hope to contribute to the eventual realization of super efficient machines.
Whether I achieve something big or small, I hope to share parts of my journey with you on this blog.