Selective wetting and transport of systemic pesticides on bionic stomatal surface regulated by host–guest interaction

Abstract

Pesticide residues in the environment pose serious threats to ecosystem and human health, and how to achieve the selective transport and enrichment of specific pesticide residues through hydrophobic surface are still an important challenge. Herein, inspired by the “stomatal gating effect” of plant leaves, amino pillar[5]arene-based host–guest gating systems are introduced into artificial porous surfaces with hydrophobicity to fabricate bionic stomatal surfaces (AP5A porous surface), which is expected to modulate the interaction between pesticide and bionic surface through host–guest interaction to selective promote the wetting and transport of specific pesticide on the surface. Experimental and simulation results indicated the AP5A porous surface would selectively capture and adsorb the triclopyr pesticide by strong host–guest interaction to enhance pesticide wettability, and realized the host–guest interaction induced fast transport and enrichment of triclopyr (246.4 μM cm−2h−1) on the bionic stomatal surface. This work provides a new perspective that host–guest interaction between pesticides and solid surface as a gating switch to selective induce the systemic pesticides wetting and transport on bionic porous surface, which is believed to be useful in applications such as the enrichment and removal of pesticide residues from environment in the future.