Bio-Mimetic Hierarchies for Universal Surface Enhancement and Applications in Water Treatment

Hierarchical superstructures, ubiquitously found in nature, offer enhanced efficiency in both substance reaction and mass transport owing to their unique multi-scale features. Inspired by these natural systems, this research reports a novel, general, and scalable electrochemical scheme for creating highly branched multilevel porous superstructures on various substrates. These structures exhibit cascading features from centimeters down to sub-100 nanometers, significantly increasing the surface area of substrates, such as foams, foils, and carbon cloth by two orders of magnitude—among the highest reported enhancements. The reported versatile and low-cost method, which can be applied to a range of substrates, enables energy-efficient flow-assisted water purification. The processed substrate successfully removes 99% of mercury within 0.5 hours at 540 rpm, meeting the safety standards for drinkable water set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Overall, this general, economical, and versatile scheme for imparting quasi-3D hierarchical structures to various surfaces could broadly impact energy and environmental remediation.