Washington, Jan 30 : University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and their colleagues from Bell Laboratories have created a material that can repel almost any liquid.
The material is made by sculpting a composed of tightly packed nanostructures that resemble tiny nails.
However, when electricity is applied, the liquid on the surface slips over the heads of the nanonails and spreads out between their shanks, and completely wets the entire surface in the process.
This unique material is developed by UW-Madison mechanical engineers Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor and their team, who etched a silicon wafer to create a forest of conductive silicon shanks and non-conducting silicon oxide heads.