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Record W4414120574 · doi:10.1016/j.pmatsci.2025.101578

Bioinspired waterproof, breathable materials: How does nature transport water across its surfaces and through its membranes?

2025· article· en· W4414120574 on OpenAlexafffund
Sara K. Fleetwood, Maya Kleiman, Victoria French, Joice Jaqueline Kaschuk, E. Johan Foster

Bibliographic record

VenueProgress in Materials Science · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMaterials Science
TopicSurface Modification and Superhydrophobicity
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British Columbia
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaCanada Foundation for Innovation
KeywordsWater transportWaterproofingPenetration (warfare)Porous mediumPorosityWater vaporMembraneTextile

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The controlled transport of water vapor and liquid water across membranes is a crucial biological process observed in natural systems for over 460 million years. Through evolution, plants have developed various methods to regulate water gradients between their internal structures and the external environment. The primary natural mechanisms used to modulate the water gradient effectively involve integrating specialized organs, like those responsible for gas exchange, in tandem with developing impermeable outer surfaces. Several applications in engineered materials – including rainwear, wound dressings, textiles, packaging, and building materials require breathability and waterproofing properties. Breathable materials can enable water vapor movement within their structure, while waterproof materials effectively resist the penetration and absorption of liquid water. Developing materials that can simultaneously exhibit waterproofness, and breathability presents a significant scientific and engineering challenge due to the inherent conflict between these properties. This review aims to delve into the physicochemical mechanisms governing plant water transport and establish a connection with developing bio-based and bio-inspired materials. We explore how plant components can give rise to hydrophobic, hydrophilic, porous, and responsively porous bio-inspired materials, addressing challenges encountered in the waterproof-breathable textile industry.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.001
Threshold uncertainty score0.003

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.003
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.015
GPT teacher head0.297
Teacher spread0.282 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations8
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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