A Bioinspired Slippery Surface with Stable Lubricant Impregnation for Efficient Water Harvesting.

Abstract

Inspired by Nepenthes pitcher plants, slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) have recently attracted increasing attention for directional transport and movement manipulation of water droplets. Nevertheless, infused lubricants are generally instable and easy to deviate from such surfaces during applications, resulting in the lost control on the fog capture and motion of droplets as well as serious risk of water safety. Here, a highly stable SLIPS with improved lubricant storage is developed through the structure design of synergistically constructing regular micro-pincushion and nanoparticles. Notably, on the basis of the microstructure, the presence of nano-architecture shows great contribution to obviously increased capillary force as well as suppressed lubricant loss during water collection. Featuring the stable surface-slippery property, the biomimetic SLIPS displays well maintained dropwise coalescence of water from fog and efficient water harvesting performance. The water collection efficiency is as high as 852 mg cm-2 h-1 and is stable within continuous 20 h application. This fundamental illustration of structural synergism can be further applied to construct more new water manipulation and harvesting platforms with stably slippery surfaces/interfaces.