Authors: Xinran Zhang, Cihui Liu, Lulu Zhang, Linnan Jia, Maqian Shi, Liang Chen, Yunsong Di, Zhixing Gan
Published: 2021-03-06
Source: Full article
AbstractSuperwettability materials from existing natural creatures have been widely studied to enable artificial manufacture. Variable wettability states, especially Janus wettability, have attracted particular interest because of the applications in various intelligent systems. However, to date, most of these existing Janus wettability surfaces lack stimuli‐response visualization, which requires the connection of electrical instruments to process and display external stimulus signals. Inspired by the functional performance of lotus leaf and Betta splendens, a multifunctional asymmetric film is designed by using the superhydrophobic/superhydrophilic binary cooperative strategy and tunable structural color feature. Thus, it is demonstrated that the Janus membrane could not only timely report the arrival of the environmental variables via directional migration induced by Marangoni effect, but also quantitively feedback the stimuli through visible structural color variations. These features indicate that the Janus wettability structural color film may open a potential chapter in designing and fabricating the multifunctional robotic environmental detector.