Park Jun Kyu, Kim Seok
Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1206 W. Green, St. Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Micromachines (Basel). 2019 Mar 22;10(3):201. doi: 10.3390/mi10030201.
Fog harvesting of the Namib desert beetles has inspired many researchers to design artificial fog harvesting hybrid surfaces, which commonly involve flat hydrophilic patterns on hydrophobic surfaces. However, relatively less interest has been shown in the bumpy topography of the Namib desert beetle's dorsal surface as well as its curved body shape when designing artificial hybrid surfaces. In this work, we explore a fog harvesting flexible hybrid surface that has a superhydrophilic 3D copper oxide pattern on a hydrophobic rough elastomer background surface enabled by transferring a copper layer from a prepared donor substrate to a receiving elastomer substrate. The water collection rates of the hybrid surface and control samples are measured, and the results reveal the advantages of 3D bumpy structures on a curved shape surface to facilitate fog harvesting, particularly in more unfavorable fog stream conditions. The curved 3D bumpy hybrid surface exhibits an over 16 times higher water collection rate than the flat 2D hybrid surface in the fog stream in parallel to the hybrid surface. This work provides an improved understanding of the role of the Namib desert beetle's bumpy dorsal surface and curved body shape, and offers an insight into the design of novel surfaces with enhanced fog harvesting performance.
纳米布沙漠甲虫的雾气收集方式启发了许多研究人员设计人工雾气收集混合表面，这种表面通常由疏水表面上的扁平亲水图案组成。然而，在设计人工混合表面时，人们对纳米布沙漠甲虫背部的崎岖地形及其弯曲的身体形状关注相对较少。在这项工作中，我们探索了一种雾气收集柔性混合表面，该表面通过将铜层从制备好的供体基板转移到接收弹性体基板上，在疏水粗糙弹性体背景表面上形成超亲水三维氧化铜图案。测量了混合表面和对照样品的集水率，结果揭示了弯曲形状表面上的三维凹凸结构在促进雾气收集方面的优势，特别是在更不利的雾流条件下。在与混合表面平行的雾流中，弯曲的三维凹凸混合表面的集水率比平坦的二维混合表面高出16倍以上。这项工作有助于更好地理解纳米布沙漠甲虫崎岖的背部表面和弯曲的身体形状所起的作用，并为设计具有更高雾气收集性能的新型表面提供了思路。
