Polymer coating lets liquids go with the flow

This new coating - created in the DREAM (Durable Repellent Engineered Advanced Materials) Laboratory, led by University of Toronto Engineering Professor Kevin Golovin - was inspired by the natural world.

“Nature has already developed strategies to transport liquids across surfaces in order to survive,” says Mohammad Soltani, researcher in the DREAM Laboratory and lead author of a new paper recently published in Advanced Functional Materials.

“We were inspired by the structural model of natural materials such as cactus leaves or spider silk. Our new technology can directionally transport not only water droplets, but also low surface tension liquids that easily spread on most surfaces.”

The innovation is claimed to have important implications for microfluidics. By reducing the quantity of sample and reagents required, and automating protocols for working with them, microfluidics can power lab-on-a-chip devices that offer fast, inexpensive medical tests. Proponents hope this could lead to diagnosing multiple conditions in minutes using one or two drops of blood.