Recently, Prof. Meng Tao’s team published a paper “Highly efficient water harvesting of bioinspired spindle-knotted microfibers with continuous hollow channels” (DOI: 10.1039/D2TA00242F) in Journal of Materials Chemistry A (IF: 12.732).

Fog, a potential source of freshwater, can be utilized to cope with global freshwater crisis. In the morning after the rain or in a humid corner, a large number of crystal droplets are often found hanging on the spider web as the periodic spindle-knotted structure of spider silk can collect freshwater from atmospheric air (Figure 1). Inspired by such phenomenon, Prof. Meng Tao’s team designed and fabricated hollow spindle-knotted microfibers with efficient water harvesting performance (Figure 2). The droplet volume of bio-inspired microfibers is 1,663 times that of spindle knots, far exceeding the recorded highest level of water collection in the world (571 times).

Water Harvesting Performance and Micro-morphology of Hollow Spindle-knotted Microfibers

Paper link:

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/ta/d2ta00242f