NEW YORK: A team of American scientists from the University of Rochester, New York, have successfully developed a technique to transform metals into extremely water repellent, or “super-hydrophobic” materials.
Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and physics at University of Rochester, and senior scientist Anatoliy Vorobyev, say the process changes the surface of metals by repeatedly subjecting the surface to bursts of lasers, USA Today reports.
“The material is so strongly water-repellent, the water actually gets bounced off,” Guo says in the statement. “Then it lands on the surface again, gets bounced off again, and then it will just roll off from the surface.”
In a statement from the university, Guo says that using this technique they can create multifunctional surfaces and the patterns created by lasers won’t rub off.
The patterns consist of etched parallel grooves into the metals and use rapid pulses of a laser beam that are extremely strong but extremely brief, lasting just a few quadrillionths of a second, BBC says.
These etched materials are even slipperier than Teflon, a hydrophobic material famous thanks to non-stick frying pans, BBC continues to report. To make water droplets slide off Teflon, the surface must be tilted to nearly 70 degrees. For the new materials developed by Guo and Anatoliy, it will shed droplets when tilted at just four degrees.
Sploid explains that the use of these new materials may be revolutionary for the construction of airplanes, cellphones, computers — anything essentially made of metal.
Guo and Anatoliy’s complete findings can be found in their paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Applied Physics.
