Fog Harvesting of a Bioinspired Nanocone-Decorated 3D Fiber Network
writer：Chang Li, Yufang Liu, Chunlei Gao, Xin Li, Yan Xing, and Yongmei Zheng*
keywords：fog harvesting, bioinspired, nanocones, 3D ?ber network, Rayleigh instability
source：期刊
Issue time：2019年
The bioinspired nanocone-decorated threedimensional ?ber network (N3D) can be fabricated, where an original 3D web is designed, inspired by some newest research ?ndings of spider web, and it is decorated with hydrophilic zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocones inspired by cactus spine. Multilevel high speci?c surface area exposure on ?ber together with the hydrophilic decoration enables it to be more attractive to water molecules. These nanocones can capture fog droplet, generate coalesced droplet, and accordingly make droplet transport e?cient because of Laplace pressure di?erence. Especially, a novel mechanism revealed that after the nanocone-decorated ?ber was wetted, that is, a water ?lm formed and immediately broke up into droplets, owing to the force relating to Rayleigh instability. Consequent lower retention surface realizes the formation of fast continuous water ?ow, rather than the traditional intermittent course. Thus, outstanding fog-harvesting e?ciency was achieved on N3D, for example, probably reaching 865.1 kg/m2/day, where the mass of collected water within 2 h can raise up to over 240 times higher than the weight of an original 3D web without nanocones. Such a bioinspired ZnO nanocone-decorated 3D ?ber network (i.e., N3D) has potential application to harvest fog water for production or living, for example, water recondensation in cooling water towers and in agricultural irrigation systems, even in water-de?cient countries.