Fibers exhibit excellent performance in liquid manipulation that is normally aroused by either the structural or the chemical gradient. Here, we developed radially arranged fiber arrays with different fibrous elasticities that exhibited distinctly different performances in liquid manipulation in terms of the fibrous elastocapillary coalescence, the high-efficiency water encapsulation, and the inability to manipulate liquid. It is proposed that the fiber elasticity acts as a driving force when interacting with liquid, equivalent with the structural and chemical gradient. We revealed the fundamental premise of how fiber elasticity affects its dynamic wetting behaviors, which sheds new light on the design of fiber systems with different liquid-manipulation abilities.
Keywords: bioinspired; dynamic; elasticity; fiber; liquid manipulation.