Inspired by the water-collecting strategies of desert beetles and spider silk, a novel kind of surface with star-shaped wettablity patterns has been developed. By combining both wettability and shape gradients, the as-prepared surface has gained higher efficiency in water collection compared to circle-shaped wettability patterns and uniformly superhydrophilic or superhydrophobic surfaces.

With the increasing world population and the rapid development of the global industry, clean water is becoming scarcer and scarcer. Means of translating latent water in fog to dominant available water, i.e., fog collection, therefore becomes highly desirable. Previously, it was demonstrated that the cactus O. Microdasys has an integrated fog collection system arising from the evenly distributed clusters of spines and trichomes on the cactus stem. Here, it is reported that the intersite of the clusters on the cactus stem is densely covered with cones, which are also capable of collecting water from fog efficiently. Inspired by these cones, using a simple method combining mechanical perforating and template replica technology, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cone arrays are fabricated with different arrangements and the one in hexagonal arrangement proves to be more efficient due to the more turbulent flow filed around the staggered cones and the rapid directional movement of water drops along each cone. This investigation opens up new avenue to collect water efficiently and may also provide clues to research about dust filtering and smog removal, which is attracting increasing attention worldwide.

The discovery of the new class of 2D materials has stimulated extensive research interest for fundamental studies and applied technologies. Owing to their unique electronic and optical properties, which differ from their bulk counterparts and conventional optoelectronic materials, 2D materials at the atomic scale are very attractive for future photovoltaic devices. Over the past years, their great potential for photovoltaic applications has been widely investigated by creating a variety of specific device structures. Here, the recent progress made toward the exploitation of 2D materials for high‐performance photovoltaic applications is reviewed. By addressing both lateral and vertical configurations, the prospects offered by 2D materials for future generations of photovoltaic devices are elucidated. In addition, the challenges facing this rapidly progressing research field are discussed, and routes to commercially viable 2D‐material‐based photovoltaic devices are proposed.

We fabricate a bioinspired spindle-knotted fiber (BSF) via an improved method of Rayleigh instability break-up droplets. The BSF is composed of multi-level spindle-knots that can generate continuous gradients of surface energy and different Laplace pressures. We investigate the water collecting ability of BSF under humid environments and observe how the spindle-knots collect water from the environmental humidity by means of cooperative driving forces resulting from individual spindle-knots. We reveal that the multi-level spindle-knots of BSF may play a role in water collection compared with uniform fibers without any spindle-knots. We demonstrate that the size effect of a spindle-knot is related to the capillary adhesion of hanging-drops, thus BSF has a much higher water collection efficiency in humid environments than normal uniform fibers. The mechanism is elucidated further to open a model of high efficiency materials for water collection.

Issues of surfaces, e.g., inspired from beetle's back, spider silk, cactus stem, etc., become the active area of research on designing novel materials in need of human beings to acquire fresh water resource from air. However, the design of materials on surface structure is little achieved on controlling of micro-scale drop transport in a long distance. Here, we report the ability of micro-drop transport in a long distance on a bioinspired Fibers with Gradient Spindle-knots (BFGS), which are fabricated by tilt angle dip-coating method. The micro-drop of ~0.25 μL transports in distance of ~5.00 mm, with velocity of 0.10–0.22 m s−1 on BFGS. It is attributed to the multi-level cooperation of the release energy of drop coalescence along the gradient spindle-knots, in addition to capillary adhesion force and continuous difference of Laplace pressure, accordingly, water drops are driven to move fast directionally in a long distance on BFGS.