Integrated Microdroplets Array for Intelligent Electrochemical Fabrication

Abstract

The efficiency and accuracy of material fabrication are closely related to the quantity and quality of material structures/properties, which usually involves multiple parameters with high cost and time waste. Here, an intelligent and high‐throughput platform is developed to regulate multiple electrodeposition parameters of a microdroplets array for controlling and predicting nanostructures. On such platform, the minipillars can anchor the microdroplets as individual deposition reactors, and the electrodes are integrated on one side to achieve high‐throughput and simultaneous electrochemical fabrication. Such integrated and intelligent platform has been employed to investigate gold nanostructures via regulating the deposition parameters (time, potential, HAuCl4 concentration, Cl−/SO42− concentration in electrolyte, temperature, and humidity), and to establish the database of electrochemically‐fabricated gold nanostructures for guiding the design and fabrication of specific gold nanostructures. It is believed that such platform can act as a pioneer to promote the development of materials science by coupling intelligence technology with nanomaterial fabrication.

Bio-Inspired Hierarchical Micro/Nanostructured Surfaces for Superhydrophobic and Anti-Ice Applications

“…The low contact angle hysteresis and low sliding angle of the superhydrophobic surface are very essential for self-cleaning applications ( Neinhuis and Barthlott, 1997 ; Yilbas et al, 2018 ). It is interesting to note that M structured surfaces have been reported to show good application potential ( Song et al, 2020a ; Song et al, 2020b ; Fan et al, 2021 ).…”

Mini‐pillar Based Multi‐channel Electrochemical Platform for Studying the Multifactor Silver Electrodeposition

“…The morphologies of silver nanomaterials can greatly affect performance which can be regulated by various inputting parameters [6–9]. Some imperceptible changes of input parameters (e. g. potential, electrolyte composition) may lead to fundamentally huge differences in the silver morphologies (e. g. size, shape and composition) [5, 10, 11]. Such morphology differences can be attributed to the three main aspects as follows: (1) The nature of the material including the inherent information of the materials (e. g. roughness and hydrophobicity) and the external information during the synthesis process (e. g. temperature and pH); (2) Huge number of possible supporting materials (e. g. electrolyte composition); (3) Basic physical and chemical methods in complex material systems [12–16].…”

High‐Resolution Patterned Functionalization of Slippery “Liquid‐Like” Brush Surfaces via Microdroplet‐Confined Growth of Multifunctional Polydopamine Arrays

“…For example, micropatterned hydrophilic patches on hydrophobic or slippery surfaces could be employed as biomimetic water-harvesting materials from fog. [21][22][23] The patterned surfaces with defined surface properties also enabled the manipulation of arrays of microdroplets or cells for high-throughput studies, [24][25][26][27] as well as the control on directional transport of droplets to work as surface-tension-confined microfluidic devices without the need for microchannels. [28][29][30] In addition, patterning of surface wettability or chemical reactivity are essential in various sensor systems based on biomolecular immobilization, photonic crystals, or plasmonic nanostructures, in which the assembly of molecules or nanoparticles could be selectively guided into desired positions by the micropatterns.…”