Nature is a school for scientists and engineers. Inherent multiscale structures of biological materials exhibit multifunctional integration. In nature, the lotus, the water strider, and the flying bird evolved different and optimized biological solutions to survive. In this contribution, inspired by the optimized solutions from the lotus leaf with superhydrophobic self‐cleaning, the water strider leg with durable and robust superhydrophobicity, and the lightweight bird bone with hollow structures, multifunctional metallic foams with multiscale structures are fabricated, demonstrating low adhesive superhydrophobic self‐cleaning, striking loading capacity, and superior repellency towards different corrosive solutions. This approach provides an effective avenue to the development of water strider robots and other aquatic smart devices floating on water. Furthermore, the resultant multifunctional metallic foam can be used to construct an oil/water separation apparatus, exhibiting a high separation efficiency and long‐term repeatability. The presented approach should provide a promising solution for the design and construction of other multifunctional metallic foams in a large scale for practical applications in the petro‐chemical field. Optimized biological solutions continue to inspire and to provide design idea for the construction of multiscale structures with multifunctional integration.
Learning from nature will give us some important inspiration in designing multifunctional materials and in developing new technology. Self-propelled motion is ubiquitous in nature. Special wetting surfaces have considerable technological potential for various applications arising from their extreme repellent properties toward liquids. Here, we reported the spontaneous anti-condensation on low adhesive superamphiphobic engineered Al surfaces. The mechanism of anti-condensation was also investigated in this work. The dropwise condensation on engineering metals was removed autonomously without any external forces arising from the out-of-plane jumping motion of the coalesced drops. The self-propelled jumping motion of merged drops is driven by the surface energy released upon drop coalescence. Besides the anti-condensation, the resultant Al surfaces also showed robust repellency toward various polar, nonpolar liquids and even corrosive liquids, demonstrating stable superamphiphobicity, anti-corrosion, and self-cleaning properties. This will extend the practical applications of engineering metals in the fields of anti-icing and heat exchange.
Polymer-composite materials have the characteristics of light weight, high load, corrosion resistance, heat resistance, and high oil resistance. In particular, graphene composite has better electrical conductivity and mechanical performance. However, the raw materials of graphene composite are processed into semi-finished products, directly affecting their performance and service life. The electromagnetic pulse compaction was initially studied to get the product Graphene/PEKK composite powder. Simultaneously, spark plasma sintering was used to get the bars to determine the electrical conductivity of Graphene/PEKK composite. On the basis of this result, conducting Graphene/PEKK composite powder can be processed by electromagnetic pulse compaction. Finite element numerical analysis was used to obtain process parameters during the electromagnetic pulse compaction. The results show that discharge voltage and discharge capacitance influence on the magnetic force, which is a main moulding factor affecting stress, strain and density distribution on the specimen during electromagnetic pulse compaction in a few microseconds.
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