Asymmetric Soft-Structure Functional Surface for Intelligent Liquids' Distinction, Transportation, and Reaction Mixer

Structured surfaces have attracted wide attention because of their great potential in directional transport, liquid collection or separation, microfluidics, etc. However, it remains a big challenge to design a surface that can distinguish various liquids, utilize their inherent properties to control their transportation, and realize functional applications. Herein, it is presented an asymmetric soft-structure functional surface (ASFS) with arrayed curvature units that can make the Laplace pressure as a driving force to determine the preferential spreading direction and show abundant transport behaviors for liquids with different surface tensions. With good deformability, the proposed ASFS can directionally transport liquids along complex terrains, e.g., 1D-tilted, 2D-curved, and 3D-helical trajectories. It is also demonstrated that the ASFS can achieve synchronous or asynchronous liquid mixing by choosing appropriate liquids. Moreover, the intelligent response ability allows the ASFS to be a portable contact angle discriminator. This study proposes a new strategy to manipulate liquids via their intrinsic properties and opens new avenues for application-oriented liquid operation surfaces.

Automated summary

This study presents an asymmetric soft-structure functional surface (ASFS) that can directionally transport liquids, achieve liquid mixing, and has intelligent response ability by utilizing the intrinsic properties of the liquids. It opens new avenues for application-oriented liquid operation surfaces.