Enhanced Fog Harvesting through Capillary-Assisted Rapid Transport of Droplet Confined in the Given Microchannel

A novel integrated bioinspired surface is fabricated by using an innovative capillarity-induced selective oxidation method, to achieve the combination of the fog-collecting characteristics of a variety of creatures, i.e., the micronanostructures of spider silk, the wettable patterns of desert beetle, the conical structure of cactus spine, and the hierarchical microchannel of Sarracenia trichome. The fog is captured effectively via multistructures on the cone tips, and captured droplet is collected and confined in the microchannel to realize rapid transport via the formation of wettable pattern on the surface and the introduction of wettable gradient in the microchannel. Consequently, the fog harvest efficiency reaches 2.48 g/h, increasing to nearly 320% compared to the normal surface. More interestingly, similar to Sarracenia trichome, the surface also presents two transport modes, namely, Mode I (water transport along dry microchannel) and Mode II (succeeding water slippage on the water film). In Mode II, the velocity of 34.10 mm/s is about three times faster than that on the Sarracenia trichome. Such a design of integrated bioinspired surface may present potential applications in high-efficiency water collection systems, microfluidic devices, and others.

Automated summary

By combining multiple biological characteristics, a novel highly efficient fog-collecting surface has been designed to rapidly collect fog water and achieve rapid transportation. This surface has potential applications in high-efficiency water collection systems and microfluidic devices.