Lubricant self-replenishing slippery surface with prolonged service life for fog harvesting

Slippery lubricant-infused surfaces exhibit excellent fog-harvesting capacities compared with superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces.However,lubricant depletion is typically unavoidable under dynamic conditions,and reinfused oil is generally needed to recover the fog-harvesting capacity.Herein,an effective strategy for delaying the depletion of lubricant to prolong the service life of fog harvesting is proposed.An ultrathin transparent lubricant self-replenishing slippery surface was fabricated via facile one-step solvent evaporation polymerization.The gel film of the lubricant self-replenishing slippery surface,which was embedded with oil microdroplets,was attached to glass slides via the phase separation and evaporation of tetrahydrofuran.The gel film GFs-150(with oil content 150 wt%of aminopropyl-terminated polydimethyl siloxane(PDMS–NH2))exhibited superior slippery and fog-harvesting performance to other gel films.Furthermore,the slippery surfaces with the trait of oil secretion triggered by mechanical stress exhibited better fog-harvesting capabilities and longer service life than surfaces without the function of lubricant self-replenishment.The lubricant self-replenishing,ultrathin,and transparent slippery surfaces reported herein have considerable potential for applications involving narrow spaces,visualization,long service life,etc.