Triboelectric wetting for continuous droplet transport

Manipulating liquid is of great significance in fields from life sciences to industrial applications. Owing to its advantages in manipulating liquids with high precision and flexibility, electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) has been widely used in various applications. Despite this, its efficient operation generally needs electrode arrays and sophisticated circuit control. Here, we develop a largely unexplored triboelectric wetting (TEW) phe-nomenon that can directly exploit the triboelectric charges to achieve the programmed and precise water droplet control. This key feature lies in the rational design of a chemical molecular layer that can generate and store triboelectric charges through agile triboelectrification. The TEW eliminates the requirement of the electric circuit design and additional source input and allows for manipulating liquids of various compositions, volumes, and arrays on various substrates in a controllable manner. This previously unexplored wetting mech-anism and control strategy will find diverse applications ranging from controllable chemical reactions to surface defogging.

Automated summary

Liquid manipulation is important, and electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) is a commonly used method. However, EWOD requires complex circuit control. Here, we develop an unexplored triboelectric wetting (TEW) phenomenon that directly uses triboelectric charges for precise water droplet control, eliminating the need for circuit control.