Repellent materials

A new discovery by scientists at Queen’s University Belfast has changed the face of research into water-repellent “ultrahydrophobic” materials creating a wealth of potential practical applications.

Drs Graham Saunders and Steven Bell of Queen’s University School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, together with PhD student, Iain Larmour, have developed a very simple method for treating metals that results in extremely high hydrophobicity using readily available starting materials and standard laboratory equipment in a process that only takes a few minutes.

The significance of the discovery lies in the ease of fabrication and the flexibility of the method. Dr Saunders said, “There have been numerous attempts to emulate the extraordinary water repellency of lotus leaves, but very few synthetic surfaces can match these natural systems. Those that do are unsuitable for practical applications because they are difficult and costly to fabricate or can be applied only to a very limited number of materials. Our method produces robust surfaces displaying hydrophobicity that surpasses that of lotus leaves - ultrahydrophobicity. Furthermore the method is cheap and quick, and can be extended to a wide range of metals.”