A Self-Healing, Water-Repellent Coating That's Ultra Durable

Unbreakable: Water-Repellent Coating | MSE Anish Tuteja

 A team at the University of Michigan has created a self-healing, water-repellent coating that can be sprayed onto virtually any surface.

Current water-repellent materials lack the durability needed for applications like clothing or ship hulls. Instead of searching for one specific chemical system, as has been the focus for decades, this team looked at the problem at a more fundamental level, examining the properties that make a water-repellent system durable. They found that most existing water-repellent materials rely on their specific geometry (microscopic pillars), which also makes them fragile.

This new material is far more resilient, healing itself hundreds of times, "even after being abraded, scratched, burned, plasma-cleaned, flattened, sonicated and chemically attacked."

This research is a reminder of the power of creating breakthroughs by approaching problems from a fresh perspective and asking fundamentally different questions.

Spotted by Marissa Brassfield / Written by Jason Goodwin. Read the entire article here.