Wang Zhiyong, Huang Longhui, Gao Jinghui, Luo Hong, Dong Xinran, Wang Cong, Song Yuxin
Research Center for Forestry Equipment of Hunan Province, College of Mechanical and Intelligent Manufacturing, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, 498 South Shaoshan Street, Changsha 410004, P. R. China.
State Key Laboratory of Precision Manufacturing for Extreme Service Performance, College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Central South University, 932 South Lushan Street, Changsha 410083, P. R. China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 Oct 2;16(39):53252-53260. doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c11883. Epub 2024 Sep 19.
Fog collection is a promising solution for mitigating the urgent water shortage around the world. Despite the delicate design of various bionic fog harvesting surfaces with prowess to enable fast fog capture and programmed water transport, achieving sustainable and efficient fog collection by regulating the macroscale surface refreshment efficacy remains rarely concerned yet is effective. Here, we proposed a bioinspired structural design to achieve significant improvement on the surface refreshment efficacy to 46.47%, nearly 5 times larger than that of conventional design. Specifically, we constructed superhydrophilic vein-like microchannels on a superhydrophobic brass surface by using laser texture technology and hydrothermal treatment. Our microchannel design acts as a "highway" for synergically transporting and converging the collected fog droplets, as well as rapidly refreshing large surface area for the subsequent fog collection, reminiscent of the leaf veins responsible for the persistent mass transport between plant tissues. The practical implementation also convinced our design of a maximum water collection efficiency of up to 506.67 mg cm h and a long-term performance stability within a 10 h test. Our design is generic to most of the fog harvesting materials, showing great application potential for efficient atmospheric fog collection.
雾收集是缓解全球紧迫水资源短缺问题的一种很有前景的解决方案。尽管各种仿生雾收集表面设计精巧，具备快速捕获雾气和实现程序化水传输的能力，但通过调节宏观尺度的表面更新效率来实现可持续且高效的雾收集，这一问题很少受到关注，然而却是有效的。在此，我们提出了一种受生物启发的结构设计，将表面更新效率显著提高至46.47%，几乎是传统设计的5倍。具体而言，我们利用激光纹理技术和水热处理，在超疏水黄铜表面构建了超亲水的叶脉状微通道。我们的微通道设计充当了一条“高速公路”，用于协同运输和汇聚收集到的雾滴，同时迅速更新大面积表面以进行后续的雾收集，这让人联想到负责植物组织间持续物质运输的叶脉。实际应用也证实了我们的设计具有高达506.67 mg cm h的最大集水效率以及在10小时测试内的长期性能稳定性。我们的设计适用于大多数雾收集材料，在高效大气雾收集方面显示出巨大的应用潜力。
