The wharf roach Ligia exotica is a small animal that lives by the sea and absorbs water from the sea through its legs by virtue of a remarkable array of small blades of micron scale. We find that the imbibition dynamics on the legs is rather complex on a microscopic scale, but on a macroscopic scale the imbibition length seems to simply scale linearly with elapsed time. This unusual dynamics of imbibition, which usually slows down with time, is advantageous for long-distance water transport and results from repetition of unit dynamics. Inspired by the remarkable features, we study artificially textured surfaces mimicking the structure on the legs of the animal. Unlike the case of the wharf roach, the linear dynamics were not reproduced on the artificial surfaces, which may result from more subtle features on the real legs that are not faithfully reflected on the artificial surfaces. Instead, the nonlinear dynamics revealed that hybrid structures on the artificial surfaces speed up the water transport compared with non-hybrid ones. In addition, the dynamics on the artificial surfaces turn out to be well described by a composite theory developed here, with the theory giving useful guiding principles for designing hybrid textured surfaces for rapid imbibition and elucidating physical advantages of the microscopic design on the legs.
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Ochanomizu University, Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan;Center for Fostering Young and Innovative Researchers, Faculty of Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya, Japan;CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Hon-cho, Kawaguchi, Japan;Department of Life and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya, Japan;Department of Biology, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Handayama, Higashi-ku, Hamamatsu, Japan;CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Hon-cho, Kawaguchi, Japan;WPI-Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Japan;CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Hon-cho, Kawaguchi, Japan;Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Ochanomizu University, Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan;CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Hon-cho, Kawaguchi, Japan
Recommended Citation:
Marie Tani,Daisuke Ishii,Shuto Ito,et al. Capillary Rise on Legs of a Small Animal and on Artificially Textured Surfaces Mimicking Them[J]. PLOS ONE,2014-01-01,9(5)