FURI | Spring 2021

3D Printing of Energy-Free Liquid Transport Microchips with Bioinspired Hierarchical Structures

Energy-free liquid transport has become an attractive research topic for a variety of industries due to its simplicity and its effectiveness. Traditional liquid transport is not ideal since it requires a lot of energy and regulation which limits the advancement of mechanical designs. This proposed research is motivated to address the barrier of creating multiscale Nepenthes alata inspired structures and further study the effect of morphology of bioinspired structures on the energy-free directional liquid transport. In this project, the peristome architecture of nepenthes inspired structures will be designed and printed for the study of directional water transport.