Environmentally Responsive Intelligent Dynamic Water Collector

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 2202 - 2210
• Main Authors: Tang, Jie, Peng, Linhui, Chen, Daqi, Xie, Jingting, Chen, Mingchuang, Wu, Jinlei, Hao, Xi, Cai, Wanzhu, Zheng, Feipeng, Shi, Jifu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 12.01.2022
• Subjects: Surfaces, Interfaces, and Applications; fog harvesting; shape memory alloy; unidirectional transportation; Janus; water collection
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c17477

Collecting water from fog flow is emerging as a promising solution to the water shortage problem. This work demonstrated a novel environmentally responsive water collector made from a self-prepared Janus polyvinyl alcohol sponge in combination with a two-way shape memory alloy spring, which transforms the traditional manner of static water collection into a dynamic one. The unidirectional water transport of the Janus structure together with the dynamic collection approach correspond to a 30.8% increase in the water-collection rate (WCR). The resultant WCR is up to 5.1 g/h, which ranks relatively high compared to similar studies. The light- and thermal-response capability, easy fabrication, and good cycling performance indicate that our devices could be utilized in a variety of applications. In this work, an efficient, intelligent adaptive, simple-preparation, precision-guided, and economical fog-collecting devices are recommended. Our work provides new insights on the design of high-efficient water collectors with practicability.