Superhydrophobic surfaces: from natural to biomimetic to functional

Nature is the creation of aesthetic functional systems, in which many natural materials have vagarious structures. Inspired from nature, such as lotus leaf, butterfly’ wings, showing excellent superhydrophob- icity, scientists have recently fabricated a lot of biomimetic superhydrophobic surfaces by virtue of var- ious smart and easy routes. Whilst, many examples, such as lotus effect, clearly tell us that biomimicry is dissimilar to a simple copying or duplicating of biological structures. In this feature article, we review the recent studies in both natural superhydrophobic surfaces and biomimetic superhydrophobic surfaces, and highlight some of the recent advances in the last four years, including the various smart routes to construct rough surfaces, and a lot of chemical modifications which lead to superhydrophobicity.We also review their functions and applications to date. Finally, the promising routes from biomimetic superhy- drophobic surfaces in the next are proposed.