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Slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPSs) prepared with phase invariant materials (e.g., Krytox GPL oil) have been increasingly researched as low adhesion engineered functional surfaces in the last decade. However, phase change materials (PCMs) have been scarcely adopted, although they are potential candidates due to their inherent lubricant characteristics as well as temperature-dependent phases empowering unique thermoresponsive switchable wettability. Here, paraffin wax (an organic PCM) has been applied on hydrophobized nanoporous copper substrate to realize the phase-change SLIPSs (PC-SLIPSs) fabricated via spin-coating followed by thermal annealing, which overcomes earlier limitations encountered on the PC-SLIPSs. Advantages of these PC-SLIPSs are: the prompting of a low adhesion Wenzel (LAW) state opposed to earlier completely-pinned Wenzel state in the solid phase, and the optimized slippery state without excess of PCM in the liquid phase. Further, in order to characterize the intimate interactions between liquid droplets and the different phases of the PC-SLIPSs, i.e., solid, mush, and liquid phases, the contact line dynamics have been comprehensively investigated, unveiling the water droplet adhesion and depinning phenomenon as the function of thermo-responsive wetting states.Lastly, the PC-SLIPSs have also been tested for water vapor condensation, demonstrating the feasibility of dropwise condensation and the shift of droplet size distribution in both the solid and liquid phases. The results suggest that such engineered surfaces have great potential to prompt and tune dropwise condensation via thermo-responsive switchable wettability for heat transfer and water harvesting applications.

This review reports the recent progress and future prospects of wettability gradient surfaces (WGSs), particularly focusing on the governing principles, fabrication methods, classification, characterization, and applications. While transforming the inherent wettability into artificial wettability via bioinspiration, topographic micro/nanostructures are produced with changed surface energy, resulting in new droplet wetting regimes and droplet dynamic regimes. WGSs have been mainly classified in dry and wet surfaces, depending on the apparent surface states. Wettability gradient has long been documented as a surface phenomenon inducing the droplet mobility in the direction of decreasing wettability. However, it is herein critically emphasized that the wettability gradient does not always result in droplet mobility. Indeed, the sticky and slippery dynamic regimes exist in WGSs, prohibiting or allowing the droplet mobility, respectively. Lastly, the stringent bottlenecks encountered by WGSs are highlighted along with solution-oriented recommendations, and furthermore, phase change materials are strongly anticipated as a new class in WGSs. In all, WGSs intend to open up new technological insights for applications, encompassing water harvesting, droplet and bubble manipulation, controllable microfluidic systems, and condensation heat transfer, among others.