Water Repellency Goes Nano: Carpet of carbon nanotubes cleans itself
The amazing water-shedding ability of the lotus leaf has long inspired materials scientists. The leaf’s wax-coated microstructures cause rain droplets to bounce off the surface, carrying away with them dust particles and other contaminants. In trying to reproduce this so-called lotus effect in the lab, chemical engineers have fabricated a similar self-cleaning material out of forests of carbon nanotubes.
Led by Karen Gleason of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the researchers first created arrays of tiny islands of nickel on a surface of silicon. From these islands, the researchers grew vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. “Sort of like a bed of pins” is how coinvestigator Kenneth Lau describes the result.