Plant-inspired surfaces and interfaces for sustainable technologies

The flora and fauna in nature endow the Earth with a flourishing scene of prosperity with their diverse appearances, colors and patterns, constituting common biopolymers and biominerals. The principles of construction of manifold structures and functionalities from fundamental building blocks in flora and fauna have inspired materials scientists to innovate artificial materials with superior properties and performance. Specifically, florae present numerous minute structures established from elementary blocks of lignin, cellulose, pectin and hemicellulose to induce extraordinary demands to survive in extremely diverse environments on Earth. In this review, we introduce the robust material properties and thought-provoking functionalities of plants, such as super-wettability, liquid/ion transport properties, actuation properties, etc. Then, we summarize the intriguing inspiration in the development of artificial superstructures, self-cleaning surfaces and responsive structures for applications in energy harvesting and generation, electrochemical energy storage, environmental cleaning and remediation, and strong and tough mechanical components. It is expected that some principles of how minute structures and functionalities of plants construct extraordinary capabilities and properties that could be extracted from the current progress and some insight could be offered for future material innovations by learning the best from nature.