Stretch-Induced Integrative Bioinspired Spider Silk Fiber for Enhancement of Fog Collection

Conventional bioinspired spider silk fibers (BSSFs) possess high fog capturing ability, but their collection efficiency is hindered by the slow transport of captured droplets. In this study, inspired by spider silk and the Sarracenia trichome, a special spider silk and Sarracenia trichome shape like bioinspired fiber with hydrophilic microchannels (HMSSF) aimed at accelerating droplet transportation is effected by surface wrinkling of highly deformable, soft elastomers via a simple stretching method. The results indicate that numerous microchannels can be easily introduced on the whole fiber by simple stretching. Consequently, our HMSSF could possess both efficient fog capture capability and fixed-point convergence capability of the spider silk and the rapid water transfer ability of the Sarracenia trichome, leading to a 466.7% increase in the fog collection rate compared to that of traditional BSSFs. The present work may be of great significance to constructing novel fog collection materials and aid in providing new ideas for improving fog collection efficiency.