Yes, this may be huge. Just been able to protect a ship's hull will
earn every award possible. Everything else matters also simply
because all aging effects in materials is derived primarily from
surface interaction of some sort.
Thus while no one truly cares about clothing or even prepared to pay
a premium, we all do care about hard surfaces. Expect living spaces
in which everything slides of onto the floor easily unless it is
specifically attached. It will be the ultimate hygienic environment.
Expect surfaces that care truly germaphobic to result from this.
It cannot be our permanent environment but it certainly can be our
own private clean space in which pathogens find it impossible to
concentrate. This alone will make it difficult for disease to take
hold.
This is early days of course, but how about a hull coating that
happens to have zero drag. It will not go any faster per se, but it
will do it without significant drag. This heralds a huge energy
saving in marine transport. It remains to be seen just how this may
also play out on an air foil but there may be gains there also. This
last may be all a stretch but the possibilities are certainly real.
Superomniphobic
Material Repels Any Liquid You Can Think Of
A new kind of
liquid-repelling coating sends any liquid bouncing, rolling, or
wicking away.
By Clay
DillowPosted 01.16.2013
We’ve seen lots of
hydrophobic materials before, but these water- and liquid-repelling
materials often work within constraints. Some liquids bounce or wick
away, while others--based on properties like viscosity or surface
tension, or whether the substance in questions is organic or
inorganic--are not affected by the hydrophobic qualities of the
material. But a team of University of Michigan materials science is
reporting a breakthrough that could have big implications for
everything from stain-free clothing to protective surface coatings
and chemical resistant protective suits: a superomniphobic coating
that is resistant to pretty much any liquid we know of.
The coating is derived
from an electrospun coating that is carefully structured in a
cross-linked pattern that essentially makes it impervious to
attack from any contact angle, and that’s really the critical
piece to this. We’ve seen superhydrophobic surfaces before that are
extremely adept at repelling high surface tension liquids like water.
And we’ve seen what are known as superoleophobic materials that are
repellant toward low surface tension liquids.
But superomniphobic
surfaces have been more elusive. In laboratory settings they’ve
been developed for resistance to Newtonian fluids, but the U. of
Michigan teams claim that their material is the first that is truly
supermniphobic in the sense that any liquid you throw at it--organic
or inorganic, high surface tension or low surface tension, Newtonian
or non-Newtonian (repellant to ketchup!)--will bounce or roll off.
Which is pretty crazy.
In a paper submitted to the Journal of the American Chemical Society,
the team describes dropping aluminum sheets coated in their
superomniphobic material in vats of concentrated hydrochloric acid
and concentrated sodium hydroxide (that’s a highly caustic metallic
base) and anxiously watching absolutely nothing happen. Even when
examined microscopically after several minutes of immersion, the
aluminum showed no damage.
That, of course, is
big news for chemical shielding. Textiles coated in the stuff could
make for pretty serious all-purpose hazmat suits, and coatings could
be used for everything from corrosion-resistance to drag reduction
for maritime vessels.
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