Recent advances in spiky pollen-inspired functional microparticles

Natural spiky pollen is a valuable material endowed with robust physicochemical properties, whose echinate surface morphology provides amplified specific surface area, stronger adhesion, and mechanical puncture capability, offering superior performance compared to spherical microparticles under similar conditions. Currently, functional microparticles inspired by spiny pollen can be classified into two main categories: microparticles modified from natural spiky pollen and artificial spike-like microparticles. This review showcases the unique structure and property of spiky pollen and summarizes various preparation methods to obtain spiny pollen-inspired functional microparticles, as well as highlighting their various separate applications in cargo delivery, environmental remediation, cell capture and so on. Finally, we analyze the challenges the chall functional microparticles face at the current stage and outlook their future development.