In recent years, anisotropic wetting surfaces have attracted wide scientific attention for both fundamental research and practical applications. Directional transportation of droplets, as an efficient method to conduct droplet motion, has attracted great interest in research and industrial fields. Nevertheless, the great challenges in its application focus on these aspects such as sample conservation, velocity, distance, precision and driving force. Very recently, some research highlights were published regarding improving the directional transportation of aqueous droplets by creating micro topological channels. The conceptually novel multi-bioinspired strategy based on structures and functions is rendering a promising candidate for practical applications. In addition, the numerical simulation and experimental verification can adjust and optimize the configuration parameters to improve the transportation capacities of the channels. This review focuses on typical and recent advances in the area of directional droplet transportation on micro channels, mainly based on micro-/nanostructures. As a result of their excellent performance in solving the aforementioned challenges, we anticipate that these works would prosperously promote the fabrication and application of directional droplet transportation.
Cite this paper
Chu, L. , Wang, Y. and Ge, X. (2022). Directional Droplet Transportation on Microchannels. Open Access Library Journal, 9, e9253. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1109253.
Liu, M., Wang, S. and Jiang, L. (2017) Nature-Inspired Superwettability Systems. Nature Reviews Materials, 2, Article No. 17036.
https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.36
Ge, P., Wang, S., Zhang, J. and Yang, B. (2020) Micro-/Nanostructures Meet Anisotropic Wetting: From Preparation Methods to Applications. Materials Horizons, 7, 2566-2595. https://doi.org/10.1039/D0MH00768D
Yang, X., Zhuang, K., Lu, Y. and Wang, X. (2020) Creation of Topological Ultraslippery Surfaces for Droplet Motion Control. ACS Nano, 15, 2589-2599.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c07417
Huang, S., Li, J., Liu, L., Zhou, L. and Tian, X. (2019) Lossless Fast Drop Self-Transport on Anisotropic Omniphobic Surfaces: Origin and Elimination of Microscopic Liquid Residue. Advanced Materials, 31, Article ID: 1901417.
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201901417
Chen, H., Zhang, P., Zhang, L., Liu, H., Jiang, Y., Zhang, D. and Jiang, L. (2016) Continuous Directional Water Transport on the Peristome Surface of Nepenthes Alata. Nature, 532, 85-89. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17189
Yu, X., Lai, H., Kang, H., Liu, Y., Wang, Y. and Cheng, Z. (2022) Underoil Directional Self-Transportation of Water Droplets on a TiO2-Coated Conical Spine. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 14, 6274-6282.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c24815
Zheng, Y., Zhang, C., Wang, J., Yang, L., Shen, C., Han, Z. and Liu, Y. (2020) Nonwet Kingfisher Flying in the Rain: The Tumble of Droplets on Moving Oriented Anisotropic Superhydrophobic Substrates. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 12, 35707-35715. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c08889
Liu, Z., Liu, H., Li, W. and Song, J. (2022) Optimization of Bioinspired Surfaces with Enhanced Water Transportation Capacity. Chemical Engineering Journal, 433, Article ID: 134568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2022.134568
Liu, T. and Kim, C.J. (2014) Turning a Surface Superrepellent Even to Completely Wetting Liquids. Science, 346, 1096-1100. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1254787
Wang, Q., He, Y., Geng, X., Hou, Y. and Zheng, Y. (2021) Enhanced Fog Harvesting through Capillary-Assisted Rapid Transport of Droplet Confined in the Given Microchannel. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 13, 48292-48300.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c14696
Bhatia, D. and Santis, A. (2020) A Preliminary Numerical Investigation of Airborne Droplet Dispersion in Aircraft Cabins. Open Journal of Fluid Dynamics, 10, 198-207. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojfd.2020.103013
Liu, C., Sun, Y., Huang, J., Guo, Z. and Liu, W. (2021) External-Field-Induced Directional Droplet Transport: A Review. Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, 295, Article ID: 102502. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cis.2021.102502
Son, J., Bae, G.Y., Lee, S., Lee, G., Kim, S.W., Kim, D. and Cho, K. (2021) Cactus-Spine-Inspired Sweat-Collecting Patch for Fast and Continuous Monitoring of Sweat. Advanced Materials, 33, Article ID: 2102740.
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202102740