Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, People's Republic of China.
Nanoscale. 2019 Sep 7;11(33):15448-15463. doi: 10.1039/c9nr04065j. Epub 2019 Aug 12.
Water scarcity plagues two-thirds of the global population. Interestingly, researchers have found that spider silk exhibits excellent water-collection ability owing to its unique structure and chemical components. Based on this characteristic, numerous bioinspired fibers have been fabricated for water collection. Herein, we review the water-collection process for spider silk and recent vital advances in bioinspired fibriform materials, focusing on the water-collection mechanisms of spindle-knot fibers, which exhibit directional droplet transport, hanging mechanism and hanging ability. Also, we evaluated their water-collection abilities on a micro- and macro-scale, which gave a better view for the design of bioinspired water-collection materials. These advances enable the significant use of bioinspired fibers in water collection, which may be applied in several other fields, such as directional transport, tissue engineering, oil-water separation and biosensors.
水资源短缺困扰着全球三分之二的人口。有趣的是，研究人员发现，由于蜘蛛丝独特的结构和化学成分，它具有出色的集水能力。基于这一特性，已经制造出许多仿生纤维来进行集水。在此，我们综述了蜘蛛丝的集水过程和最近在仿生纤维材料方面的重要进展，重点介绍了具有定向液滴传输、悬挂机制和悬挂能力的纺锤结纤维的集水机制。此外，我们还评估了它们在微观和宏观尺度上的集水能力，为仿生集水材料的设计提供了更好的视角。这些进展使仿生纤维在集水方面得到了广泛应用，可能应用于其他几个领域，如定向传输、组织工程、油水分离和生物传感器。
