Abstract
Antigravity water transport plays important roles in various applications ranging from agriculture, industry, and environmental engineering. In natural trees, ubiquitous water-flow over 100 m high from roots through the hierarchical xylem to leaves is driven by sunlight-powered continuous evaporation and the negative pressure. Inspired by natural trees, herein an artificial trunk-leaf system is built up to structurally mimic natural trees for a continuous antigravity water delivery. The artificial tree consists of directional microchannels for antigravity water transport, and a top leaf-like hybrid hydrogel that are acts as continuous solar steam evaporator, plus a purposely engineered steam collector. It is found that continuous uniform microchannels of acetylated chitin optimize and enhance capillary rise (≈37 cm at 300 min) and reduce vertical water transport resistance. A remote water harvesting, and purification is performed with a high rate of 1.6 kg m(-2) h(-1) and 184 cm in height under 1 sun irradiation and the collection efficiency up to 100% by evaporative cooling technique. It is envisioned that the basic design principles underlying the artificial tree can be used to transform solar energy into potential energy.