Bioinspired Surface Enabled by Anisotropic Pyramid Structure Arrays for Directional Liquid Self‐Transport

Abstract

ABSTRACT Inspired by the phenomenon of directional liquid transport in natural organisms, various bionic surfaces with customized topological structures have been designed and fabricated, contributing to advances in such fields as microfluidics, microreactors, energy harvesting, biomedicine, etc. Despite extensive progress, bionic surfaces with directional liquid self‐transport capabilities still suffer from high technical thresholds, cumbersome fabrication processes, and contamination‐induced failure, limiting their widespread applications. In this work, a bioinspired surface with anisotropic inverted pyramid groove arrays was developed to achieve directional self‐transport of diverse liquids, from water to blood. Bioinspired by the nepenthes alata peristome, a discretely anisotropic inverted pyramid model was theoretically constructed, and then the surface with inverted pyramid groove arrays was efficiently and simply prepared via three‐dimensional (3D) printing and cast molding. This bioinspired surface exhibited rapid, long‐distance, and continuous liquid self‐transport with high unidirectionality under the optimal structural parameters. Moreover, this bioinspired surface was innovatively applied to achieve efficient removal of blood cells from diluted blood without complex operations, providing a proof‐of‐concept foundation for future applications of bioinspired surfaces in microfluidics, plasma separation, and biomedical detection.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Advanced Materials Technologies, 2026 · DOI ↗