Multiple biological structures have demonstrated fog collection abilities, such as beetle backs with bumps and spider silks periodic spindle-knots joints. Many Cactaceae species live in arid environments are extremely drought-tolerant. Here we report that one of the survival systems cactus Opuntia microdasys lies its efficient system. This unique system is composed well-distributed clusters conical spines trichomes on stem; each spine contains three integrated parts different roles process...

Animals living in the extremely cold environment, such as polar bears, have shown amazing capability to keep warm, benefiting from their hollow hairs. Mimicking a strategy synthetic fibers would stimulate smart textiles for efficient personal thermal management, which plays an important role preventing heat loss and improving efficiency house warming energy consumption. Here, "freeze-spinning" technique is used realize continuous large-scale fabrication of with aligned porous structure,...

Inspired by the water-collecting strategies of desert beetles and spider silk, a novel kind surface with star-shaped wettablity patterns has been developed. By combining both wettability shape gradients, as-prepared gained higher efficiency in water collection compared to circle-shaped uniformly superhydrophilic or superhydrophobic surfaces. As service our authors readers, this journal provides supporting information supplied authors. Such materials are peer reviewed may be re-organized for...

Abstract Polymer‐based thermal interface materials (TIMs) with excellent conductivity and electrical resistivity are in high demand the electronics industry. In past decade, thermally conductive fillers, such as boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS), were usually incorporated into polymer‐based TIMs to improve their for efficient heat management. However, performance of those composites means that they still far from practical applications, mainly because poor control over 3D network. present...

Ultrafast 4D printing (<30 s) of responsive polymers is reported. Visible-light-triggered polymerization commercial monomers defines digitally stress distribution in a 2D polymer film. Releasing the after converts structure into 3D. An additional dimension can be incorporated by choosing precursors. The process overcomes speed limiting steps typical 3D (4D) printing.

Natural materials, such as bone, teeth, shells, and wood, exhibit outstanding properties despite being porous made of weak constituents. Frequently, they represent a source inspiration to design strong, tough, lightweight materials. Although many techniques have been introduced create structures, long-range order the porosity well precise control final architecture remain difficult achieve. These limitations severely hinder scale-up fabrication layered structures aimed for larger...

Using a bidirectional freezing technique, combined with uniaxial pressing and in situ polymerization, “nacre-mimetic” hydroxyapatite/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) composites are developed by processing large-scale aligned lamellar ceramic scaffolds. Structural mechanical characterization shows “brick-and-mortar” structures, akin to nacre, interesting combinations of strength, stiffness, work fracture, which provide pathway making strong tough lightweight materials.

Materials combining lightweight, robust mechanical performances, and multifunctionality are highly desirable for engineering applications. Graphene aerogels have emerged as attractive candidates. Despite recent progresses, the bottleneck remains how to simultaneously achieve both strength resilience. While multiscale architecture designs may offer a possible route, difficulty lies in lack of design guidelines experimentally necessary structure control over multiple length scales. The latter...

Inspired by the efficient fog collection on cactus spines, conical copper wires with gradient wettability are fabricated through electrochemical corrosion and subsequent chemical modification. These dual-gradient wires’ fog-collection ability is demonstrated to be higher than that of pure hydrophobic surfaces or hydrophilic surfaces, underlying mechanism also analyzed. As a service our authors readers, this journal provides supporting information supplied authors. Such materials peer...

Inspired by spider silk, a series of artificial silks with spindle-knots are fabricated. Tiny water drops (tens picoliters) driven controllable direction on the fiber surfaces. The study will help future design smart materials and devices to drive tiny in manner. Detailed facts importance specialist readers published as "Supporting Information". Such documents peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They made available submitted authors. Please note: publisher is responsible for...

A nature-inspired water-cycling system, akin to trees, perform effective water and solar energy management for photosynthesis transpiration is considered be a promising strategy solve scarcity issues globally. However, challenges remain in terms of the relatively low transport rate, short distance, unsatisfactory extraction efficiency. Herein, enlightened by conifer tracheid construction, an efficient evaporation system composed hierarchical structured aerogel reported. This architecture...

Abstract Replicating nacre’s multiscale architecture represents a promising approach to design artificial materials with outstanding rigidity and toughness. It is highly desirable yet challenging incorporate self-healing shape-programming capabilities into nacre-mimetic composites due their high filler content. Here, we report such composite obtained by infiltrating thermally switchable Diels-Alder network polymer lamellar scaffold of alumina. The chemical bond switchability the physical...

Through designing hierarchical structures, particularly optimizing the chemical and architectural interactions at its inorganic/organic interface, nacre has achieved an excellent combination of contradictory mechanical properties such as strength toughness, which is highly demanded yet difficult to achieve by most synthetic materials. Most techniques applied develop nacre-mimetic composites have been focused on mimicking "brick-and-mortar" structure, but interfacial features, especially...

Aerogels have been considered as an ideal material for thermal insulation. Unfortunately, their application in textiles is greatly limited by fragility and poor processability. We overcame these issues encapsulating the aerogel fiber with a stretchable layer, mimicking core-shell structure of polar bear hair. Despite its high internal porosity over 90%, our up to 1000% strain, which improved compared that traditional fibers (~2% strain). In addition washability dyeability, mechanically...

Cellular materials with excellent mechanical efficiency are essential for aerospace structures, lightweight vehicles, and energy absorption. However, current synthetic cellular materials, such as lattice a unit cell arranged in an ordered hierarchy, still far behind many biological terms of both structural complexity performance. Here, the complex porous structure mechanics cuttlebone studied, which acts rigid buoyancy tank cuttlefish to resist large hydrostatic pressure deep-sea...

Liquid absorption and recycling play a crucial role in many industrial environmental applications, such as oil spill cleanup recovery, hemostasis, astronauts' urine recycling, so on. Although liquid absorbing materials have been developed, it still remains grand challenge to achieve both fast efficient cost-effective energy-saving manner, especially for viscous liquids crude oil. A smart polyurethane-based porous sponge with aligned channel structure is prepared by directional freezing....

Abstract Flexible transparent electrodes are critically important for the emerging flexible and stretchable electronic optoelectronic devices. To this end, polymer films coated with silver nanowires (AgNWs) have been intensively studied in past decade. However, it remains a grand challenge to achieve both high conductivity transmittance large‐area films, mainly due poor alignment of AgNWs their junction resistance. Here, successful attempt realize AgNW patterns on various substrates by 2D...

The demand for thermally conductive but electrically insulating materials has increased greatly in advanced electronic packaging. To this end, polymer-based composites filled with boron nitride (BN) nanosheets have been intensively studied as thermal interface material (TIM). However, it remains a great challenge to achieve isotropically ultrahigh conductivity BN/polymer due the inherent property anisotropy of BN and/or insufficient construction 3D network. Herein, we present...

Nanoscale topography was constructed on a thermally responsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) surface by grafting the polymer from silicon nanowire arrays via surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization. The as-prepared showed largely reduced platelet adhesion in vitro both below and above lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of PNIPAAm (∼32 °C), while smooth exhibited antiadhesion to platelets only LCST. Contact angle adhesive force measurements oil droplets...