Bio-Inspired Wettability Integrated System for Environmentally Adaptable Fog Harvesting

Abstract

Fog represents an underestimated water resource, particularly in arid coastal areas where the abundance of fog makes fog harvesting a highly viable and operational option. In response to the limitations of traditional fog harvesting techniques, biomimetic fog harvesting materials with special wettable surfaces have emerged as a promising solution, offering a notable enhancement in water collection efficiency (WCE). This work presents a bio-inspired multi-strategy fog harvesting material integrated with a wettability contrast pattern and asymmetric wettability. The implementation of multiple strategies at each stage of fog harvesting synergistically improves the WCE of aluminum plates by up to 53%. A solar-powered active fog-collecting system is devised based on this material to cope with changing environments, which demonstrates a significant improvement in WCE compared to a conventional fog net, reaching up to 736.67% under a static fog environment. This work provides a viable design of bio-inspired fog harvesting materials and offers a promising approach for their large-scale implementation.