Heterogenous Slippery Surfaces: Enabling Spontaneous and Rapid Transport of Viscous Liquids with Viscosities Exceeding 10 000 mPa s

Superhydrophobic and slippery lubricant-infused surfaces have garnered significant attention for their potential to passively transport low-viscosity liquids like water (1 mPa s). Despite exciting progress, these designs have proven ineffective for transporting high-viscosity liquids such as polydimethylsiloxane (5500 mPa s) due to their inherent limitations imposed by the homogenous surface design, resulting in high viscous drags and compromised capillary forces. Here, a heterogenous water-infused divergent surface (WIDS) is proposed that achieves spontaneous, rapid, and long-distance transport of viscous liquids. WIDS reduces viscous drag by spatially isolating the viscous liquids and surface roughness through its heterogenous, slippery topological design, and generates capillary forces through its heterogenous wetting distributions. The essential role of surface heterogeneity in viscous liquid transport is theoretically and experimentally verified. Remarkably, such a heterogenous paradigm enables transporting liquids with viscosities exceeding 12 500 mPa s, which is two orders of magnitude higher than state-of-the-art techniques. Furthermore, this heterogenous design is generic for various viscous liquids and can be made flexible, making it promising for various systems that require viscous liquid management, such as micropatterning.

Simulation investigation of the spontaneous motion behaviors of underwater oil droplets on a conical surface

A conical surface can realize the spontaneous transportation of micro-sized oil droplets in an aqueous environment without energy input, exhibiting great potential for applications in microfluidics, chemical micro-reactors, water remediation, etc. However, the precise manipulation of an oil droplet on a cone is still very challenging because the dynamic behavior of a droplet on a cone is not fully understood. Herein, the dynamic behavior of oil droplets on a cone is quantitively studied via numerical simulations, and the effects of wettability, apex angle, and droplet size on the droplet's dynamic behavior are systematically analyzed. The results show that the moving velocity and transport distance of the droplet on the cone are highly related to the droplet shape on the cone. It was found that a clamshell-shaped droplet moves faster than a barrel-shaped droplet. Besides, the clamshell-shaped droplet with a larger size, on the cone with a smaller apex angle and smaller contact angle tends to obtain a faster moving speed and a longer transportation distance. The droplet shape adopted on the cone was determined by the cone wettability and the size of the droplet relative to the local curvature of the cone. It was found that the oil droplet tends to form a barrel shape on the cone with a highly oleophilic and small apex angle, and tends to form a clamshell shape on cones with a highly oleophobic and large apex angle. In addition, the droplet might transit from a barrel shape to a clamshell shape when it moves from the cone tip to the cone base, and the trigger time of the transit is negatively correlated with the contact angle and apex angle of the cone. This work provides a microscale understanding of the dynamic behavior of an underwater oil droplet on a cone, and also offers theoretical guidance for manipulating the behavior of a droplet on a cone and for the rational design of cone surfaces for spontaneous droplet transport and droplet collection.

Recent Growth of Wettability Gradient Surfaces: A Review

This review reports the recent progress and future prospects of wettability gradient surfaces (WGSs), particularly focusing on the governing principles, fabrication methods, classification, characterization, and applications. While transforming the inherent wettability into artificial wettability via bioinspiration, topographic micro/nanostructures are produced with changed surface energy, resulting in new droplet wetting regimes and droplet dynamic regimes. WGSs have been mainly classified in dry and wet surfaces, depending on the apparent surface states. Wettability gradient has long been documented as a surface phenomenon inducing the droplet mobility in the direction of decreasing wettability. However, it is herein critically emphasized that the wettability gradient does not always result in droplet mobility. Indeed, the sticky and slippery dynamic regimes exist in WGSs, prohibiting or allowing the droplet mobility, respectively. Lastly, the stringent bottlenecks encountered by WGSs are highlighted along with solution-oriented recommendations, and furthermore, phase change materials are strongly anticipated as a new class in WGSs. In all, WGSs intend to open up new technological insights for applications, encompassing water harvesting, droplet and bubble manipulation, controllable microfluidic systems, and condensation heat transfer, among others.

Anisotropy-induced directional self-transportation of low surface tension liquids: a review

Inspired by natural surfaces such as butterfly wings, cactus leaves, or the Nepenthes alata plant, synthetic materials may be engineered to directionally transport liquids on their surface without external energy input. This advantageous feature has been adopted for various mechanical and chemical processes, e.g. fog harvesting, lubrication, lossless chemical reactions, etc. Many studies have focused on the manipulation and transport of water or aqueous droplets, but significantly fewer have extended their work to low surface tension (LST) liquids, although these fluids are involved in numerous industrial and everyday processes. LST liquids completely wet most surfaces which makes spontaneous transportation an active challenge. This review focuses on recently developed strategies for passively and directionally transporting LST liquids.