Academic Staff

Dr. Xu Wanghuai received his PhD degrees from City University of Hong Kong and University of Science and Technology of China in 2020, after which he worked as a postdoctoral fellow (under the RGC postdoctoral fellowship scheme) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong. In November 2022, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as an RGC postdoctoral fellow and then was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in August 2023.

His research focuses on designing electrical devices that can efficiently harvest energy from renewable sources, such as water, sunlight, heat, and their nexus, and developing cross-scale applications ranging from small-scale IoTs to large-scale multi-source energy harvesting and management. He is also interested in the study of the interfacial electrical phenomena, especially the water-electricity interaction at the three-phase interface, which are important in some applications such as microfluidics and atmospheric water harvesting. Over the past several years, he has published more than 40 papers in Journals such as Nature, Science Advances, Joule, and PNAS. He currently serves as a guest editor of Journal Micromachines.

His works have been recognized by many awards, including the Hong Kong Youth Scientist Award (2022), MRS Graduate Student Silver Award (2021), RGC postdoctoral fellowship (2021), Hiwin Doctoral Dissertation Outstanding Award (2021), and Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies Outstanding Doctoral Research Award (2020).

Selected publications

1. Wanghuai Xu^#, Huanxi Zheng^#, Yuan Liu^#, Xiaofeng Zhou^#, Chao Zhang, Yuxin Song, Xu Deng, Michael Leung, Zhengbao Yang, Ronald Xu, Zhonglin Wang, Xiao Cheng Zeng, Zuankai Wang. A droplet-based electricity generator with high instantaneous power density. Nature, 578, 392 (2020).
2. Wanghuai Xu^#, Yuankai Jin^#, Wanbo Li, Yuxin Song, Lili Wang, Miaomiao Cui, Xiantong Yan, Zuankai Wang. Triboelectric wetting for continuous liquid transport. Science Advances, 51: eade2085 (2022).
3. Wanghuai Xu, Zuankai Wang. Fusion of slippery interfaces and transistor-inspired architecture for water kinetic energy harvesting. Joule, 4, 2527 (2020).
4. Xiantong Yan^#, Wanghuai Xu^#, Yajun Deng^#, Chao Zhang, Huanxi Zheng, Siyan Yang, Yuxin Song, Pengyu Li, Xiaote Xu, Yue Hu, Luwen Zhang, Zhenbao Yang, Steven Wang, Zuankai Wang. Bubble energy generator. Science Advances, 8, eabo7698 (2022).
5. Yuankai Jin^#, Wanghuai Xu^#, Huanhuan Zhang, Ruirui Li, Jing Sun, Siyan Yang, Minjie Liu, Haiyang Mao, Zuankai Wang. Electrostatic tweezer for remote droplet manipulation. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 119, e2105459119 (2022).

• Doctor of Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China
• Doctor of Philosophy, City University of Hong Kong