A revised method to create hydrophobic surfaces has implications for any technology where water meets a solid surface, from optics and micro
Researchers have developed a new mechanism to make water droplets slip off surfaces, described in a paper published in Nature Chemistry. The discovery challenges existing ideas about friction between solid surfaces and water and opens up a new avenue for studying droplet slipperiness at the molecular level. The new technique has applications in a range of fields, including plumbing, optics, and the auto and maritime industries. All around us, water is always interacting with solid surfaces. Cooking, transportation, optics and hundreds of other technologies are affected by how water sticks to surfaces or slides off them. Understanding the molecular dynamics of these microscopic droplets helps scientists and engineers find ways to improve many household and industrial technologies. Liquid-like surfaces are a new type of droplet-repellent surface that offer many technical benefits over traditional approaches -- a topic recently reviewed in Nature Reviews Chemistry by Aalto University professor Robin Ras. They have molecular layers that are highly mobile yet covalently tethered to the substrate, giving solid surfaces a liquid-like quality that acts like a layer of lubricant between the water droplets and the surface itself. A research team led by Ras used a specially-designed reactor to create a liquid-like layer of molecules, called self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), on top of a silicon surface.
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