Bioinspired self-driven ultra-long-distance anti-gravity water transport device with core-shell and twofold hierarchical structure

Abstract Self-driven anti-gravity water transport has attracted extensive attention in the fields. Herein, inspired by the multiple structures of trees, we propose a self-driven ultra-long-distance anti-gravity water transport device with a core-shell structure in the radial direction and a twofold hierarchical structure in the axial direction. The core and the shell of the device are composed of a hydrophilic ordered nanofiber bundle and a glass tube respectively, which can provide powerful capillary driving force and low flow/evaporation resistance for spontaneous water lifting. The core is equipped with a bottom-up decreasing pore size and non-uniformly distributed carbon nanotubes to form an axial twofold hierarchical structure, offering Laplace pressure difference and negative pressure as extra driving forces for water transport. The device achieves a significant breakthrough in ultra-long-distance water transport of 1070 mm (one order of magnitude higher than existing materials), which also exhibits long-term transport stability for over 30 days. The tree-inspired novel structural design of the device will provide new insights into the energy-free transport of fluids.