Engineering commonality of bionic micro/nanostructures to achieve anti-contaminant surfaces: From natural inspiration to artificial optimization

Abstract

Solid surfaces in real-world scenarios are susceptible to invasion by a multitude of contaminants, which significantly impedes their normal functionality and thereby results in substantial economic losses or even safety hazards. While natural organisms utilize plenty of anti-contaminant surfaces (AC-surfaces) featuring micro/nanostructures to survive in different surroundings and even harsh ones, which have inspired scientists and engineers to create clear contaminant-resistant surface. Despite these AC-surfaces summarized, they often primarily emphasize the efficacy towards individual contaminant, lacking systematic reviews on the elucidation of potential connection or commonality of those structuring surfaces against multiple contaminants in multiple scenarios. Herein, starting with an overview to four representative scenarios where typical surface contaminants accumulate, this feature article briefly highlights micro/nano structured surfaces with widely repellent ability towards typical contaminants in the biological world. Next, primary commonality principles of micro/nanostructures against contaminants and promising contributions of different scales and geometries are discussed in detail. Drawing lesson from nature to transcend nature, outstanding superiorities of diverse artificial AC-surfaces and their realization strategies, including anti-icing surface, anti-scale surface, and anti-microbial surface, have also been addressed from a function-innovation perspectives. Finally, remaining challenges of bioinspired AC-surfaces and perspectives on the existing opportunities are presented.