Asymmetric Soft‐Structure Functional Surface for Intelligent Liquids’ Distinction, Transportation, and Reaction Mixer

Siqi Sun, Jiaqi Miao, Rong Tan, Tieshan Zhang, Gen Li, Yajing Shen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Structured surfaces have attracted wide attention because of their great potential in directional transport, liquid collection or separation, microfluidics, etc. However, it remains a big challenge to design a surface that can distinguish various liquids, utilize their inherent properties to control their transportation, and realize functional applications. Herein, it is presented an asymmetric soft‐structure functional surface (ASFS) with arrayed curvature units that can make the Laplace pressure as a driving force to determine the preferential spreading direction and show abundant transport behaviors for liquids with different surface tensions. With good deformability, the proposed ASFS can directionally transport liquids along complex terrains, e.g., 1D‐tilted, 2D‐curved, and 3D‐helical trajectories. It is also demonstrated that the ASFS can achieve synchronous or asynchronous liquid mixing by choosing appropriate liquids. Moreover, the intelligent response ability allows the ASFS to be a portable contact angle discriminator. This study proposes a new strategy to manipulate liquids via their intrinsic properties and opens new avenues for application‐oriented liquid operation surfaces.
Original languageEnglish
Article number2209769
Number of pages10
JournalAdvanced Functional Materials
Volume33
Issue number1
Online published31 Oct 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Jan 2023

Funding

S.S. and J.M. contributed equally to this work. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61922093 and U1813211), Hong Kong RGC General Research Fund (CityU 11211720), and Shenzhen Key Basic Research Project (JCYJ20200109114827177).

Research Keywords

  • directional transport
  • intelligent responses
  • liquid discrimination
  • liquid manipulation
  • structured surfaces

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Asymmetric Soft‐Structure Functional Surface for Intelligent Liquids’ Distinction, Transportation, and Reaction Mixer'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this