Oil/water separation is a worldwide challenge. Learning from nature provides a promising approach for the construction of functional materials with oil/water separation. In this contribution, inspired by superhydrophobic self‐cleaning lotus leaves and porous biomaterials, a facile method is proposed to fabricate polyurethane foam with simultaneous superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity. Due to its low density, light weight, and superhydrophobicity, the as‐prepared foam can float easily on water. Furthermore, the foam demonstrates super‐repellency towards corrosive liquids, self‐cleaning, and oil/water separation properties, possessing multifunction integration. We expect that this low‐cost process can be readily and widely adopted for the design of multifunctional foams for large‐area oil‐spill cleanup.

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Nature is a school for scientists and engineers. Inherent multiscale structures of biological materials exhibit multifunctional integration. In nature, the lotus, the water strider, and the flying bird evolved different and optimized biological solutions to survive. In this contribution, inspired by the optimized solutions from the lotus leaf with superhydrophobic self‐cleaning, the water strider leg with durable and robust superhydrophobicity, and the lightweight bird bone with hollow structures, multifunctional metallic foams with multiscale structures are fabricated, demonstrating low adhesive superhydrophobic ­self‐cleaning, striking loading capacity, and superior repellency towards different corrosive solutions. This approach provides an effective avenue to the development of water strider robots and other aquatic smart devices floating on water. Furthermore, the resultant multifunctional metallic foam can be used to construct an oil/water separation apparatus, exhibiting a high separation efficiency and long‐term repeatability. The presented approach should provide a promising solution for the design and construction of other multifunctional metallic foams in a large scale for practical applications in the petro‐chemical field. Optimized biological solutions continue to inspire and to provide design idea for the construction of multiscale structures with multifunctional integration.

This study aims to develop a paraffin‐based phase change material (PCM) for water emulsions with a low degree of supercooling, high fluidity and stability, which can be applied in thermal energy storage (TES) systems to improve the cooling efficiency. A hexadecane/water emulsion was prepared and chemically modified multi‐wall carbon nano‐tube (MWCNT) particles were dispersed in the emulsion as a nucleating agent to reduce supercooling. Three surfactants were also tested on the properties of the hexadecane/water emulsions. Thermal analysis by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) indicated that the degree of supercooling of the emulsion was significantly decreased by the nucleating agent. The effective nucleating agent concentrations required for the PCM liquid were found to be low, which agrees with the previous finding, but for the emulsion there appeared to be a minimum effective concentration to reduce the supercooling. The rheology characters and the stability of the emulsions were also observed and discussed.

Learning from nature will give us some important inspiration in designing multifunctional materials and in developing new technology. Self-propelled motion is ubiquitous in nature. Special wetting surfaces have considerable technological potential for various applications arising from their extreme repellent properties toward liquids. Here, we reported the spontaneous anti-condensation on low adhesive superamphiphobic engineered Al surfaces. The mechanism of anti-condensation was also investigated in this work. The dropwise condensation on engineering metals was removed autonomously without any external forces arising from the out-of-plane jumping motion of the coalesced drops. The self-propelled jumping motion of merged drops is driven by the surface energy released upon drop coalescence. Besides the anti-condensation, the resultant Al surfaces also showed robust repellency toward various polar, nonpolar liquids and even corrosive liquids, demonstrating stable superamphiphobicity, anti-corrosion, and self-cleaning properties. This will extend the practical applications of engineering metals in the fields of anti-icing and heat exchange.

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