A novel superhydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic polyacrylamide (PAM) hydrogel‐coated mesh is successfully fabricated in an oil/water/solid three‐phase system. Compared to traditional oleophilic materials, the as‐prepared hydrogel‐coated meshes can selectively separate water from oil/water mixtures with the advantages of high efficiency, resistance to oil fouling, and easy recyclability.

Biological organisms with super-hydrophobic properties, such as lotus leaves, [1] cicada's wings, [2] water strider's legs, [3] and desert beetle's backs [4] always give us inspiration to design and create novel interfacial materials. Learning from nature, fabrication of micro/nanohierarchical structures and chemically modification with low surface free-energy materials provide effective solutions in obtaining super-hydrophobic interfaces.[5-9] However, superoleophobic interfaces, which display apparent contact angles with oil greater than 1508 and low hysteresis, are highly dependent on modification of fluorinated materials, [10][11][12][13][14][15] resulting in a cumbersome situation when exploring new materials. As previously reported, nearly all efforts were focused on the design and preparation of materials, that is, the control of a single phase, although the interfacial properties usually involve the interactions of two or more phases.[16] Therefore, new strategies to fabricate superoleophobic interfaces remain a challenge.As far as we are aware, examples from nature in air rather than in water environments have attracted most attention from biomimetic research on self-cleaning effect. For example, seabirds, rather than fish, are endangered by pollution from oil during a shipwreck. Boats are contaminated by plankton, while fish can keep their body clean in water. The interesting phenomenon of fish keeping their surfaces clean in oil-polluted water, a new superoleophobic model, inspires us to a novel strategy in designing superoleophobic interfaces. This bioinspired superoleophobic interface with low affinity for oil drops is better than traditional approaches commonly used, which employ surfactant solutions to aid in the removal of oils from the surfaces. [17]

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Figure 6. Typical biological materials with superwettability and corresponding multiscale structures. (a) Lotus leaves demonstrate low adhesive, superhydrophobic, and self-cleaning properties, due to randomly distributed micropapillae covered by branch-like nanostructures. (b) Rice leaf surfaces possess anisotropic superhydrophobicity arising from the arrangement of lotus-like micropapillae in one-dimensional order. (a and b) Reproduced with permission from ref 7. Copyright 2002 Wiley. (c) Butterfly wings exhibit directional adhesion, superhydrophobicity, structural color, self-cleaning, chemical sensing capability, and fluorescence emission functions due to the multiscale structures. Reproduced with permission from ref 45. Copyright 2007 American Chemical Society. (d) Water strider legs have robust and durable superhydrophobicity arising from directional arrangements of needlelike microsetae with helical nanogrooves. Reproduced with permission from ref 46. Copyright 2004 Nature Publishing Group. (e) Mosquito compound eyes demonstrate superhydrophobic, antifogging, and antireflection functions due to HCP microommatidia covered by HNCP nanonipples. Reproduced with permission from ref 47. Copyright 2007 Wiley. (f) Poplar leaves possess superhydrophobic and antireflection properties originating from dense hairs with the hollow fibrous structure. Reproduced with permission from ref 48. Copyright 2011 The Royal Society of Chemistry. (g) Gecko feet present superhydrophobic, reversible adhesive, and self-cleaning functions due to the aligned microsetae splitting into hundreds of nanospatulae. Reproduced with permission from ref 49. Copyright 2012 The Royal Society of Chemistry. (h) Red rose petals exhibit superhydrophobicity with high adhesion and structural color arising from periodic arrays of micropapillae covered by nanofolds. Reproduced with permission from ref 31. Copyright 2008 American Chemical Society. (i) Salvinia leaves demonstrate the superhydrophobic and air-retention properties due to the Salvinia Effect. Reproduced with permission from ref 50. Copyright 2010 Wiley. (j) Fish scales present drag reduction, superoleophilicity in air, and superoleophobicity in water due to oriented micropapillae covered by nanostructures. Reproduced with permission from ref 33. Copyright 2009 Wiley. (k) Clam shell shows low adhesive superoleophobicity underwater arising from the surface multiscale structures and special chemical composition. Reproduced with permission from ref 51. Copyright 2012 Wiley. (l) Peanut leaves exhibit high adhesive superhydrophobicity and fog capture properties originating from the special surface multiscale structures and chemical composition. Reproduced with permission from ref 52.

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Finding a needle in a haystack: A new technology is demonstrated to enrich circulating tumor cells (CTCs) with high efficiency by integrating an antibody‐coated silicon nanopillar (SiNP, see picture; gray) substrate with an overlaid polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chaotic mixer (turquoise). It shows significantly improved sensitivity in detecting rare CTCs from whole blood, thus providing an alternative for monitoring cancer progression.

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A novel concept "D-A-π -A" organic sensitizer instead of traditional D-π -A ones is proposed. Remarkably, the incorporated low bandgap, strong electronwithdrawing unit of benzothiadiazole shows several favorable characteristics in the areas of light-harvesting and effi ciency: i) optimized energy levels, resulting in a large responsive range of wavelengths into NIR region; ii) a very small blue-shift in the absorption peak on thin TiO 2 fi lms with respect to that in solution; iii) an improvement in the electron distribution of the donor unit to distinctly increase the photo-stability of synthetic intermediates and fi nal sensitizers. The stability and spectral response of indoline dye-based DSSCs are improved by the strong electron-withdrawing benzothiadizole unit in the conjugation bridge. The incident-photon-conversion effi ciency of WS-2 reaches nearly 850 nm with a power conversion effi ciency as high as 8.7% in liquid electrolyte and 6.6% in ionic-liquid electrolyte.