The ability to manipulate water and oil phases in a programmable manner has great significance in widespread fields from art paintings to materials science. However, it remains a challenge to achieve precise and stable surface patterns for the mixtures due to the intrinsic immiscibility of water and oil. Herein, we demonstrate a general wetting-enabled-transfer (WET) strategy to construct discretionary surface patterns of organohydrogels on either flat to curved surfaces or from microscale to macroscale. Locally differentiated wettability induces hydrophilic monomers and hydrophobic monomers from an oil/water emulsion system onto the wettability-matching regions of the pre-patterned substrates, subsequently forming corresponding hydrogel and organogel patterns on the organohydrogel surface after in situ photopolymerization. The precision of the surface patterns can be controlled by optimizing the gel monomers, emulsion droplet size, and surface chemical composition of the pre-patterned substrates. Based on the WET strategy, we further constructed a “sticky-slippy” skin integrating robust adhesion with durable anti-fouling properties for robust underwater oil-repellency, and 3D patterned organohydrogel with internal hydrophilic channels for unidirectional exudate transport. This finding provides a feasible strategy for precisely patterning functional materials from two-immiscible-phase systems, showcasing great potential in many promising fields, such as flexible electronics, oil/water collection, anti-counterfeiting and neuron network construction.

“Chinese paintings” on gel surface through a wetting-enabled-transfer (WET) strategy

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