There are a large number of fouling organisms in the ocean, which easily attach to the surface of ships, oil platforms and breeding facilities, corrode the surface of equipment, accelerate the aging of equipment, affect the stability and safety of marine facilities and cause serious economic losses. Antifouling coating is an effective method to prevent marine biological fouling. Traditional organic tin and copper oxide coatings are toxic and will contaminate seawater and destroy marine ecology and have been banned or restricted. Environmentally friendly antifouling coatings have become a research hotspot. Among them, the use of natural biological products with antifouling activity as antifouling agents is an important research direction. In addition, some fouling release coatings without antifoulants, biomimetic coatings, photocatalytic coatings and other novel antifouling coatings have also developed rapidly. On the basis of revealing the mechanism of marine biofouling, this paper reviews the latest research strategies to develop environmentally friendly marine antifouling coatings. The composition, antifouling characteristics, antifouling mechanism and effects of various coatings were analyzed emphatically. Finally, the development prospects and future development directions of marine antifouling coatings are forecasted.

Spider silk is a kind of natural biomaterial with superior performance. Its mechanical properties and biocompatibility are incomparable with those of other natural and artificial materials. This article first summarizes the structure and the characteristics of natural spider silk. It shows the great research value of spider silk and spider silk bionic materials. Then, the development status of spider silk bionic materials is reviewed from the perspectives of material mechanical properties and application. The part of the material characteristics mainly describes the biocomposites based on spider silk proteins and spider silk fibers, nanomaterials and man-made fiber materials based on spider silk and spider-web structures. The principles and characteristics of new materials and their potential applications in the future are described. In addition, from the perspective of practical applications, the latest application of spider silk biomimetic materials in the fields of medicine, textiles, and sensors is reviewed, and the inspiration, feasibility, and performance of finished products are briefly introduced and analyzed. Finally, the research directions and future development trends of spider silk biomimetic materials are prospected.

A colossal lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) was observed at the surface of p-type silicon, which differs from the conventional thought that a large LPE is only observed in Schottky junctions and PN junctions consisting of several layers with different conductivities. It shows a high sensitivity of 499.24 mV/mm and an ultra-broadband spectral responsivity (from 405 nm to 980 nm) at room temperature, which makes it an attractive candidate for near-infrared detection. We propose that this phenomenon can be understood by considering the surface band bending near the surface of p-Si induced by charged surface states. The energy band diagrams of the samples are shown based on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy suggesting the correlation between the LPE and surface band bending. The conjectures are validated by changing the surface states of p-type silicon using Ni nano-films. These findings reveal a generation mechanism of the LPE and may lead to p-Si based, broadband-responsivity, low-cost, and high-precision optical and optoelectronic applications.

Surface plasmon-based approaches are widely applied to improve the efficiency of photoelectric devices such as photosensors and photocells. In order to promote the light absorption and electron-hole pair generation in devices, metallodielectric nanostructures are used to boost the growth of surface plasmons. Here, silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are used to modify a metal-semiconductor structure; thus, Ag/SiNWs/Si is manufactured. In this system, a large increased lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) is detected with a maximum positional sensitivity of 65.35 mV mm , which is ≈53-fold and 1000-fold compared to the conventional Ag/Si (1.24 mV mm ) and SiNWs/Si (0.06 mV mm ), respectively. It is demonstrated that localized surface plasmons (LSPs) contribute a lot to the increment of LPE. Furthermore, through the surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectra of rhodamine-6G and finite-difference time-domain simulation, it is illustrated that silver-coated SiNWs support strong LSPs. The results propose an enhancement mechanism based on LSPs to facilitate the photoelectric conversion in LPE and offer an effective way to improve the sensitivity of photodetectors.

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