Nano News: 08/31/15

Super water-repellant nanocoatings can now take the pressure

Conventional superhydrophobic coatings that repel liquids by trapping air inside microscopic surface pockets tend to lose their properties when liquids are forced into those pockets. In this work ("Collapse and Reversibility of the Superhydrophobic State on Nanotextured Surfaces"), extremely water-repellant or superhydrophobic surfaces were fabricated...

Seeing quantum motion

Consider the pendulum of a grandfather clock. If you forget to wind it, you will eventually find the pendulum at rest, unmoving. However, this simple observation is only valid at the level of classical physics—the laws and principles that appear to explain the physics of relatively large objects at human scale. However, quantum mechanics, the underlying...

A nanoengineered surface unsticks sticky water droplets

The lotus effect has inspired many types of liquid repelling surfaces, but tiny water droplets stick to lotus leaf structures. Now, researchers at Penn State have developed the first nano/micro-textured highly slippery surfaces able to outperform lotus leaf-inspired liquid repellent coatings, particularly in situations where the water is in the form...