Directional sliding of water: biomimetic snake scale surfaces

Abstract

Bioinspired superhydrophobic surfaces have attracted many industrial and academic interests in recent years. Inspired by unique superhydrophobicity and anisotropic friction properties of snake scale surfaces, this study explores the feasibility to produce a bionic superhydrophobic stainless steel surface via laser precision engineering, which allows the realization of directional superhydrophobicity and dynamic control of its water transportation. Dynamic mechanism of water sliding on hierarchical snake scale structures is studied, which is the key to reproduce artificially bioinspired multifunctional materials with great potentials to be used for water harvesting, droplet manipulation, pipeline transportation, and vehicle acceleration.