Microbubbles have attracted considerable attention due to their distinctive properties, such as large surface area, inherent self-compression, and exceptional mass transfer efficiency. These features render microbubbles valuable across a diverse range of industries, such as water treatment, mineral flotation, and the food industry. While several methods for microbubble generation exist, the gas–liquid membrane dispersion technique emerges as a reproducible and efficient alternative. Nevertheless, conventional approaches struggle to achieve active in situ control of bubble generation. In this study, we introduce an electrostatically responsive liquid gating system (ERLGS) designed for the active management of microbubble production. Utilizing electric fields and anionic surfactants, our system showcases the capability to dynamically regulate bubble size by manipulating the solid–liquid adsorption. Experiments confirm that this active control relies on the electrostatic adsorption and desorption of anionic surfactants, thereby regulating the interactions among the solid–liquid–gas interfaces. Our research elucidates the ERLGS's ability of precisely controlling the generation of bubbles in situ, enabling nearly one-order-of-magnitude change in bubble size, underscoring its applicability in various fields.

The human brain performs computations via a highly interconnected network of neurons. Taking inspiration from the information delivery and processing mechanism of the human brain in central nervous systems, bioinspired nanofluidic iontronics has been proposed and gradually engineered to overcome the limitations of the conventional electron-based von Neumann architecture, which shows the promising potential to enable efficient brain-like computing. Anomalous and tunable nanofluidic ion transport behaviors and spatial confinement show promising controllability of charge carriers, and a wide range of structural and chemical modification paves new ways for realizing brain-like functions. Herein, a comprehensive framework of mechanisms and design strategy is summarized to enable the rational design of nanofluidic systems and facilitate the further development of bioinspired nanofluidic iontronics. This review provides recent advances and prospects of the bioinspired nanofluidic iontronics, including ion-based brain computing, comprehension of intrinsic mechanisms, design of artificial nanochannels, and the latest artificial neuromorphic functions devices. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities of bioinspired nanofluidic iontronics in the pioneering and interdisciplinary research fields are proposed, including brain–computer interfaces and artificial neurons.

Solar-driven evaporators are promising for tackling freshwater scarcity but still challenged in simultaneously realizing comprehensive performances at one platform for sustainable and efficient application in real-world environments, such as stable-floating, scalability, salt-resistance, efficient vaporization, and anti-oil-fouling property. Herein, we design a hybrid organohydrogel evaporator to achieve the enduring oil contamination repulsion with maintaining accelerated evaporation process, and integrate capacities of ultra-stable floating, hindered salt-crystallization, large-scale fabrication for practical purification of seawater and polluted solutions. The raised water surface surrounding evaporators, induced by low density of organogel-phase, results in oil contamination resistance through the lateral capillary repulsion effect. Meanwhile, the organogel-phase containing photo-thermal carbon-nanotubes with low thermal capacity and conduction can form locally confined hot dots under solar irradiation and reduce heat dissipation on heating excessive water. Therefore, based on this approach, accelerated long-term practical purification of oil-contaminated solutions without any extra disposal is realized. Considering other properties of ultra-stable floating, large-scale fabrication, and anti-salt crystallization, these innovative organohydrogel evaporators open pathways for purifying oil-slick-polluted water via interfacial evaporation and are anticipated accelerating industrialization of efficient and sustainable solar-driven water purification.

Solar-driven water evaporation is a sustainable method to purify seawater. Nevertheless, traditional volumetric water-evaporation systems suffer from the poor sunlight absorption and inefficient light-to-thermal conversion. Also, their anti-bacterial and anti-fouling performances are crucial for the practical application. Herein, we introduce reduced graphene oxide (RGO) with broadband absorbance across the entire solar spectrum, and polypyrrole (PPy), an antibacterial polymer with efficient solar absorption and low thermal conductivity, to develop integrated RGO/PPy aerogel as both the solar absorber and evaporator for highly efficient solar-driven steam generation. As a result, the RGO/PPy aerogel shows strong absorption and good photothermal performance, leading to an evaporation rate of 1.44 kg·m⁻²·h⁻¹ and high salt rejection (up to 99.99%) for real seawater, with photothermal conversion efficiency > 90% under one sun irradiation. The result is attributed to the localized heat at the air–water interface by the RGO/PPy and its porous nature with functional groups that facilitates the water evaporation. Moreover, the RGO/PPy demonstrates excellent durability and antibacterial efficiency close to 100% for 12 h, crucial characteristics for long-term application. Our well-designed RGO/PPy aerogel with efficient water desalination performance and antibacterial property provides a straightforward approach to improve the solar-driven evaporation performance by multifunctional materials integration, and offers a viable route towards practical seawater desalination.

The development of membranes featuring carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have provided possibilities of next-generation solar desalination technologies. For solar desalination, the microstructures and interactions between the filter membrane and seawater play a crucial role in desalination performance. Understanding the mechanisms of water evaporation and ion rejection in confined pores or channels is necessary to optimize the desalting process. Here, using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we found that continuous water-water hydrogen bonding network across the rims of CNTs is the key factor in facilitating water transport through CNTs. With the continuous hydrogen bonding network, the water flux is two times of that without the continuous hydrogen bonding network. In CNT arrays, each CNT transports water molecules and rejects salt ions independently. Based on these observations, using CNT arrays consisted with densely packed thin CNTs is the most advisable strategy for evaporation desalination, possessing high transport flux as well as maintaining high salt rejection.