Bio-Inspired Wettability Surfaces : Developments in Micro- and Nanostructures

Biological surfaces provide endless inspiration for the design and fabrication of functional interface materials with unique wettability, generating promising applications such as micro-fluidic devices, functional textiles, corrosion resistance, liquid transportation, and antifogging. This book presents the mechanism of smart wetting control, such as water collection/repellency on biological micro-/nanostructure gradient interfaces. It also offers approaches on how to mimic the biological features to realize the bioinspired functional surfaces with unique wettability. The book will help researchers to develop the innovative design of novel materials.

Through natural evolvement in thousands of years, biosurfaces have become highly adaptable to display their biological functions perfectly. Interestingly, they have developed micro-/nanostructures with gradient features to achieve smart wetting controls, such as ultra-hydrophobic water repellency in lotus leaf, directional water collection in wetted spider silk, directional adhesion in superhydrophobic butterfly wing, and fog-collecting hydrophobic/hydrophilic pattern on beetle back. These surfaces provide endless inspiration for the design and fabrication of functional interface materials with unique wettability, generating promising applications such as micro-fluidic devices, functional textiles, corrosion resistance, liquid transportation, antifogging, and water-collecting devices. In recent years there has been an exciting confluence of research areas of physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science to develop functional micro- and nanosurfaces. A kernel consists of organic materials with high/low surface energy and regular/irregular order/disorder, which can be rough/smooth and endlessly arranged and combined with various styles of micro- and nanostructures.

This book introduces recent research on wettability of biological and bio-inspired surfaces. It discusses the mechanism of smart wetting controls, such as water collection/repellency on biological micro-/nanostructure gradient interfaces. It suggests ways to mimic these biological features to realize bio-inspired functional surfaces with unique wettability. The book will help researchers innovate designs with novel materials for future scientific works.