Bioinspired Directional Surfaces for Adhesion, Wetting, and Transport

In Nature, directional surfaces on insect cuticle, animal fur, bird feathers, and plant leaves are composed of dual micro-nanoscale features that tune roughness and surface energy. Here, experimental and theoretical approaches for the design, synthesis, and characterization of new bioinspired surfaces demonstrating unidirectional surface properties are summarized. The experimental approaches focus on bottom-up and top-down synthesis methods of unidirectional micro- and nanoscale films to explore and characterize their anomalous features. The theoretical component focuses on computational tools to predict the physicochemical properties of unidirectional surfaces.