Directional liquid dynamics of interfaces with superwettability

Abstract

Natural creatures use their surface structures to control directional liquid dynamics for survival. Learning from nature, artificial superwetting materials have triggered technological revolutions in many disciplines. To improve controllability, researchers have attempted to use external fields, such as thermal, light, magnetic, and electric fields, to assist or achieve controllable liquid dynamics. Emerging directional liquid transport applications have prosperously advanced in recent years but still present some challenges. This review discusses and summarizes the field of directional liquid dynamics on natural creatures and artificial surfaces with superwettabilities and ventures to propose several potential strategies to construct directional liquid transport systems for fog collection, 3D printing, energy devices, separation, soft machine, and sensor devices, which are useful for driving liquid transport or motility.

Multibioinspired JANUS Membranes with Spatial Surface Refreshment for Enhanced Fog Collection

“…[8] For example, Namib desert beetles, [9] and cactus [10] utilize hybrid hydrophobic/hydrophilic wettability and curvature gradient, respectively, for fog collection at atmospheric environment, which enrich the design for efficient water collection. [11,12] Inspired by these phenomena, various bionic surfaces have been proposed for fog collection by regulating the surface morphology and chemical composition, such as hybrid hydrophobic-hydrophilic patterned surfaces [13][14][15] and taper wires. [16][17][18] well as the inner conical pores (θ) (Figure 1f,g).…”

Core‐shell structured HZSM‐5@mesoSiO2 catalysts with tunable shell thickness for efficient n‐butane catalytic cracking

“…Recently, the control of surface and/or interface property such as wettability has been received increasing attention because it permits facile regulation of the transportation and diffusion of the media including liquid and gas, leading to broad applications such as adsorption, separation, and catalysis 13‐18 . Specific in chemical reactions, boosting the reaction efficiency based on wettability regulation has been successfully demonstrated in photocatalysis, 19 electrocatalysis, 20 organic synthesis, 21 and so on.…”

“…12 Recently, the control of surface and/or interface property such as wettability has been received increasing attention because it permits facile regulation of the transportation and diffusion of the media including liquid and gas, leading to broad applications such as adsorption, separation, and catalysis. [13][14][15][16][17][18] Specific in chemical reactions, boosting the reaction efficiency based on wettability regulation has been successfully demonstrated in photocatalysis, 19 electrocatalysis, 20 organic synthesis, 21 and so on. On this basis, given the nonpolar property of alkanes, the parallel-sequence reaction characteristics of hydrocarbon catalytic cracking, 22,23 and widely-used microporous zeolites, the design of core-shell structure based catalyst is proposed in the present work.…”

Directional Metastable Wetting Evolution of Droplets on Artificial Patterned Microcavity Surfaces

“…Droplet wettability is guided and controlled by artificial microtextured surfaces in many technological applications such as self‐cleaning, [ 1,2 ] droplet recognition, [ 3 ] water harvesting, [ 4,5 ] anti‐ice, [ 6–8 ] condensation heat transfer, [ 9 ] oil–water separation, [ 10 ] microfluidic devices, [ 11–14 ] inkjet printing, [ 15,16 ] and bio‐microarrays for DNA and protein chips. [ 17,18 ] Generally speaking, the dynamic wetting evolution of a droplet on microtextured surfaces depends on not only the macroscopic spreading process and topological changes of droplet shapes, but also the mesoscopic changes of the solid/liquid/vapor triphase interfaces and wetting transition in an isolated cavity.…”