Abstract
In order to satisfy the needs of different applications and more complex intelligent devices, smart control of surface wettability will be necessary and desirable, which gradually become a hot spot and focus in the field of interface wetting. Herein, we review interfacial wetting states related to switchable wettability on superwettable materials, including several classical wetting models and liquid adhesive behaviors based on the surface of natural creatures with special wettability. This review mainly focuses on the recent developments of the smart surfaces with switchable wettability and the corresponding regulatory mechanisms under external stimuli, which is mainly governed by the transformation of surface chemical composition and geometrical structures. Among that, various external stimuli such as physical stimulation (temperature, light, electric, magnetic, mechanical stress), chemical stimulation (pH, ion, solvent) and dual or multi-triggered stimulation have been sought out to realize the regulation of surface wettability. Moreover, we also summarize the applications of smart surfaces in different fields, such as oil/water separation, programmable transportation, anti-biofouling, detection and delivery, smart soft robotic etc. Furthermore, current limitations and future perspective in the development of smart wetting surfaces are also given. This review aims to offer deep insights into the recent developments and responsive mechanisms in smart biomimetic surfaces with switchable wettability under external various stimuli, so as to provide a guidance for the design of smart surfaces and expand the scope of both fundamental research and practical applications.
Highlights
Wettability is essential for many biological processes, tremendous engineering and industrial technologies[1,2,3,4,5,6]
According to the investigations of underlying mechanism of these natural objects, numerous researches on constructing biomimetic super-antiwetting surfaces are mainly governed by the cooperation of chemical composition with low surface energy and surface microstructures, which are widely used in both fundamental research and practical applications[16,17,18]
This review aims to provide a summary of the recent developments in smart surfaces with switchable wettability (Fig. 1), composed of the following sections
Summary
Wettability is essential for many biological processes, tremendous engineering and industrial technologies[1,2,3,4,5,6]. Related researches on smart surfaces with dynamically switchable wettability in response to changes in surrounding environment have arose extensive attention on account of the wider range of industrial applications, such as the micro-fluidic devices, on-demanded oil/water separation, self-cleaning surfaces, lap-on-chip system, tunable optical lenses, and so forth[23,24,25,26]. Several special superwetting states (superhydrophobicity, superhydrophilicity, underwater superoleophobicity, super-lubricity, and different adhesive property) based on the natural creatures are used to illustrate the structural features and wetting mechanisms related to the switchable wettability. This review focuses on the recent progress of the smart surfaces with switchable wettability and the corresponding regulatory mechanisms under external stimuli, which mainly is governed by the transformation of surface chemical composition and geometrical structures. We briefly summarize the challenges in the development of smart wetting surfaces at present and the development tendency in future
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