Wet-induced fabrication of heterogeneous hump-on-string fibers

Inspired by the high adhesiveness of the electrospun fiber, we propose a method to fabricate multi-scale heterogeneous hump-on-string fiber via the adsorption of nanoparticles, the NPCTi which is the hydrolysate of titanium tetrachloride (TiCl₄) and the nanoparticles containing Al (NPCAl) which is produced by the hydrolysis of Trimethylaluminium (TMA, Al(CH₃)₃). The water collection efficiency of the fibers can be easily controlled via changing not only the size of the beads but also the ratio of the Ti and Al. In addition, we introduce a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation to show the pressure distribution of on the surface of the fibers, which gives another explanation regarding the high water collection efficiency.