Water is the driving force of all nature. Securing freshwater has been one of the most important issues throughout human history, and will be important in the future, especially in the next decade. Fog is ubiquitous in nature and is therefore considered as an alternative and sustainable freshwater resource. Nature has long served as a source of inspiration to develop new fog‐harvesting technologies. However, the collection of freshwater from static fog is still a challenge for the existing bio‐inspired fog‐harvesting systems. Herein, magnetically induced fog harvesting under windless conditions through the integration of cactus‐inspired spine structures and magnetically responsive flexible conical arrays is reported. Under an external magnetic field, static fog can be spontaneously and continuously captured and transported from the tip to the base of the spine due to the Laplace pressure difference. This work demonstrates the advantage of collecting fog water, especially in windless regions, which provides a new avenue for fog harvesting and can serve as a source of inspiration to further optimizations of existing fog‐water‐harvesting strategies.

With the increasing world population and the rapid development of the global industry, clean water is becoming scarcer and scarcer. Means of translating latent water in fog to dominant available water, i.e., fog collection, therefore becomes highly desirable. Previously, it was demonstrated that the cactus O. Microdasys has an integrated fog collection system arising from the evenly distributed clusters of spines and trichomes on the cactus stem. Here, it is reported that the intersite of the clusters on the cactus stem is densely covered with cones, which are also capable of collecting water from fog efficiently. Inspired by these cones, using a simple method combining mechanical perforating and template replica technology, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cone arrays are fabricated with different arrangements and the one in hexagonal arrangement proves to be more efficient due to the more turbulent flow filed around the staggered cones and the rapid directional movement of water drops along each cone. This investigation opens up new avenue to collect water efficiently and may also provide clues to research about dust filtering and smog removal, which is attracting increasing attention worldwide.

Nature has long served as a source of inspiration for scientists and engineers to design and construct multifunctional artificial materials. The lotus and the peanut are two typical plants living in the aquatic and the arid (or semiarid) habitats, respectively, which have evolved different optimized solutions to survive. For the lotus leaf, an air layer is formed between its surface and water, exhibiting a discontinuous three-phase contact line, which resulted in the low adhesive superhydrophobic self-cleaning effect to avoid the leaf decomposition. In contrast to the lotus leaf, the peanut leaf shows high-adhesive superhydrophobicity, arising from the formation of the quasi-continuous and discontinuous three-phase contact line at the microscale and nanoscale, respectively, which provides a new avenue for the fabrication of high adhesive superhydrophobic materials. Further, this high adhesive and superhydrophobic peanut leaf is proved to be efficient in fog capture. Inspired by the peanut leaf, multifunctional surfaces with structural similarity to the natural peanut leaf are prepared, exhibiting simultaneous superhydrophobicity and high adhesion towards water.

After millions of years of evolution, the peanut leaf could collect water from the foggy atmosphere to perfectly survive and adapt to the arid environment owing to its special structure and wettability. The peanut leaf shows high‐adhesive superhydrophobicity, arising from the formation of the quasi‐continuous and discontinuous three‐phase contact line on the microscale and nanoscale. Furthermore, this highly‐adhesive and superhydrophobic peanut leaf is proved to be efficient in fog capture. Inspired by the peanut leaf, K. Liu and co‐workers report on page 294 the preparation of multifunctional surfaces with structural similarity to the natural peanut leaf, which exhibit simultaneous superhydrophobicity and high adhesion towards water.

No abstract