Structure-enabled liquid manipulation: bioinspired control across all dimensions

Area of Science:

• Fluid dynamics
• Bioinspired engineering
• Materials science

Background:

• Precise directional liquid control is crucial for natural and engineered systems.
• Optimizing liquid manipulation along specific trajectories presents a significant challenge.
• Existing theories require enhancement for application-specific minimal-path control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent advances in bioinspired and engineered strategies for directional liquid control.
• To explore liquid manipulation across 1D, 2D, and 3D dimensional frameworks.
• To outline design paradigms for next-generation liquid control systems.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of bioinspired strategies and engineered manipulators.
• Decoding evolutionary-optimized liquid manipulation mechanisms (e.g., Laplace pressure, capillary effects).
• Translating natural principles into dimension-specific artificial systems with asymmetric architectures.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of superior liquid directional control in 1D, 2D, and 3D frameworks.
• Achievement of precise liquid guidance using simplified asymmetric architectures.
• Enhanced liquid utilization efficiency through bioinspired designs.

Conclusions:

• Bioinspired and engineered systems offer superior directional liquid control.
• Simplified asymmetric architectures are key to precise liquid guidance.
• Future systems can integrate interfacial phenomena with microfluidic, thermal, and environmental technologies for on-demand liquid control.