Phytic acid, which is a naturally occurring component that is widely found in many plants, can strongly bond toxic mineral elements in the human body, because of its six phosphate groups. Some of the metal ions present the property of bonding with phytic acid to form insoluble coordination complexes aggregations, even at room temperature. Herein, a superhydrophobic cotton fabric was prepared using a novel and facile nature-inspired strategy that introduced phytic acid metal complex aggregations to generate rough hierarchical structures on a fabric surface, followed by PDMS modification. This superhydrophobic surface can be constructed not only on cotton fabric, but also on filter paper, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabric, and sponge. Ag, Fe, Ce, Zr, and Sn are very commendatory ions in our study. Taking phytic acid-Fe-based superhydrophobic fabric as an example, it showed excellent resistance to ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, high temperature, and organic solvent immersion, and it has good resistance to mechanical wear and abrasion. The superhydrophobic/superoleophilic fabric was successfully used to separate oil/water mixtures with separation efficiencies as high as 99.5%. We envision that these superantiwetting fabrics, modified with phytic acid-metal complexes and PDMS, are environmentally friendly, low cost, sustainable, and easy to scale up, and thereby exhibit great potentials in practical applications.

We demonstrate a facile method to induce water droplet motion on an wedge-shaped superhydrophobic copper surface combining with a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) oil layer on it. The unbalanced interfacial tension from the shape gradient offers the actuating force. The superhydrophobicity critically eliminates the droplet contact line pinning and the slippery PDMS oil layer lubricates the droplet motion, which makes the droplet move easily. The maximum velocity and furthest position of droplet motion were recorded and found to be influenced by the gradient angle. The mechanism of droplet motion on the shape gradient surface is systematically discussed, and the theoretical model analysis is well matched with the experimental results.

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The conical copper wires (CCWs) were subjected to alkali assistant oxidation or electrochemical deposition to form superhydrophilic wettability of ∼4°with needle-like or leaf-like morphology, respectively. The superhydrophobic CCWs with water contact angles of ∼156°were further constructed by modification with 1-dodecanethiol. The CCWs were used to study the effect of fog flow velocity and surface morphology on fog collection. With the fog flow velocity increased, the dominant factor for fog collection changed from fog capture to droplet motion. The surfaces with needle-like morphology displayed better fog capture ability while the surfaces with leaf-like morphology were more prone to driving droplet motion.

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