Biotemplate Replication of Novel Leaf (MIL) for Atmospheric Water Harvesting: Intrinsic Surface Wettability and Collection Efficiency.

Water shortage has become a global crisis that has posed and still poses a serious threat to the human race, especially in developing countries. Harvesting moisture from the atmosphere is a viable approach to easing the world water crisis due to its ubiquitous nature. Inspired by nature, biotemplate surfaces have been given considerable attention in recent years though these surfaces still suffer from intrinsic trade-offs making replication more challenging. In the design of artificial surfaces, maximizing their full potential and benefits as that of the natural surface is difficult. Here, we conveniently made use of leaf (MIL) and its replicated surfaces (RMIL) to collect atmosphere water. This research provides a novel insight into the facile replication mechanism of a wettable surface made of Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which has proven useful in collecting atmospheric water. This comparative study shows that biotemplate surfaces (RMIL) with hydrophobic characteristics outperform natural hydrophilic surfaces (DMIL and FMIL) in droplet termination and water collection abilities. Water collection efficiency from the Replicated leaf (RMIL) surface was shown to be superior to that of the Dry leaf (DMIL) and Fresh leaf (FMIL) surfaces. Furthermore, the wettability of the DMIL, FMIL, and RMIL was thoroughly investigated, with the apices playing an important role in droplet roll-off.