Learning from nature to designadhesion-controllable interfacial materialsis an important issue of the surface/interface field and functional materials field. Among these material designs, the fabrication of underwater surfaces with low oil-adhesion capability has attracted great attention for their potential applications in areas such as anti-bioadhesion, industrial metal clean, oil/water separation,and droplet manipulation in microfludics.

Recently, Researchers in the Key Laboratory of Organic Solids imitated a novel artificialhigh-energy inorganic coating with underwater low oil-adhesion capability inspired bythe pallium-covered region of short clam’s shell. The unique underwater low oil-adhesion capability possessed by shelloriginated from its major high-energy inorganic composition CaCO3 and surface micro/nano-hierarchical structures. Inspired by this, the researchersfabricated a high-energyinorganic copper oxide coating with underwater low oil-adhesion capability on metal copper sheet by simple oxygen-adsorption corrosion of copper in ammonia water.By simply adjusting the corrosion time, the underwater oil-adhesion force on CuO coating could be manipulated from high to low.The results have been published in Advanced Materials (Adv. Mater. 2012, 24, 3401-3405), and selected as one of the hot-topic articles of surface/interface field by WILEY-VCH.