Key Laboratory of Bioinspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, Beihang University (BUAA), Beijing 100191, P. R. China.
Shanghai Electro-Mechanical Engineering Institute, Shanghai 201109, P. R. China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Jun 24;12(25):28876-28884. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c06945. Epub 2020 Jun 12.
Bioinspired nanofibril-humped fibers (BNFs) are fabricated by using thermoplastic polyester elastomer and chitosan, via combining the electrospinning technique and fluid coating method to achieve periodic humps composed of interlaced random nanofibrils and a joint composed of aligned nanofibrils, which are highly similar to the micro/nanostructures of wetted spider silk. Especially, nanofibrils can increase the specific area of the hump to capture fog droplets effectively and transport water in channels between the nanofibrils under humid conditions, and thus the fog droplets can coalesce and be highly efficiently transported toward humps for water collection directionally. Such an ability of highly efficient fog capture is attributed to cooperation of an efficient transportation inside the outer shell of BNFs and outside transportation. Inside transportation is induced by anisotropic capillary channels between nanofibrils. When BNFs are wetted, the inside transportation mode is dominated for water collection, induced by anisotropic capillary channels between nanofibrils. BNF web is also used to investigate the droplet transportation in different cross-fiber contact modes in the process of fog capture on a large scale. This study offers an insight into the design of novel materials, which is expected to be developed for some realms of applications, such as fog harvesting engineering, filtration, and others.
仿生纳米纤维驼峰纤维（BNFs）是通过将热塑性聚酯弹性体和壳聚糖结合使用，通过电纺技术和流体涂层方法制造的，以实现由交错随机纳米纤维组成的周期性驼峰和由取向纳米纤维组成的接头，这非常类似于润湿蜘蛛丝的微观/纳米结构。特别是，纳米纤维可以增加驼峰的比表面积，有效地捕获雾滴，并在潮湿条件下在纳米纤维之间的通道中输送水，从而使雾滴能够聚合并高效地朝驼峰方向运输以进行定向集水。这种高效雾捕获能力归因于 BNFs 外壳内外高效传输的协同作用。内部传输是由纳米纤维之间各向异性的毛细通道引起的。当 BNFs 被润湿时，由于纳米纤维之间各向异性的毛细通道，内部传输模式占主导地位，有利于集水。BNF 网还用于研究大规模雾捕获过程中不同跨纤维接触模式下的液滴传输。这项研究为新型材料的设计提供了深入的了解，有望应用于雾收集工程、过滤等领域。
