Yong Ding - Janus wood membranes for autonomous water transport

Autonomous and directional transport of liquids is crucial for many applications, such as microfluidic manipulation, chemical analysis, microreactors. Particularly, Janus membranes, with asymmetric wettability on two sides, represent enticing opportunities to address this challenge. However, elaborate bottom-up fabrication processes and poor mechanical performance of commonly employed membrane substrates often restrict their utilization, especially for engineering applications. Mechanically robust bio-based and renewable wood-based Janus membranes represent a crucial milestone towards larger-scale application of Janus membranes, for example in bilayer structures with excellent fog-capturing efficiency implemented in future smart building applications.