Lotus Nanotech

Makarand writes "The lotus, a flowering plant native to Asia whose waxy leaves repel water droplets and particles of dirt, is teaching nanotechnologists a thing or two. Scientists at BASF have found that the lotus plant surfaces have a coating of wax crystals around 1 nm in diameter. This roughness on the nanometer scale helps the plant surface to reduce the actual contact area to 2-3% of the droplet covered area making its surfaces superhydrophobic. If the surface is slanting, the droplet rolls off, instead of sliding off, picking up small particles of dirt on the way giving a "self-cleaning" effect. BASF is now working on an aerosol spray to coat a surface with such a self-cleaning nanostructure. The self cleaning shoe might soon be a reality."

Comments

Self Cleaning Shoes

[Ninja Master Gara]

Just what we need, putting more people out of work by making them redundant. tsk.

Aerosol spray, eh?

[RomikQ]

And what if you got some of the spray onto your socks while applying it to your shoes... I can see it now - forever stinking, laundry-resistant... oh the horror!

Sweet

[Soporific]

I'll just be able to give myself a coating and not worry about bathing for a year.

~S

Re:Sweet

[NeoSkandranon]

You'd just have to run around naked in the rain to get it to work properly =p

Re:Sweet

[abhinavnath]

You'd just have to run around naked in the rain...

So take a shower, is that what you're saying? Dammit that doesn't help at all.

Accursed lameness filter.

Somebody call Fess Parker

[Anonymous Coward]

making its surfaces superhydrophobic.

Jim get the shotgun, the lotus has the hydrophoby!

Explanation

This has been around...

[Space Coyote]

remember this?

Colonel Homer's outfit when he became Lurlene Lumpkin's manager..
"Now this is made from a space-age fabric especially designed for Elvis. Sweat actually cleans this suit!"

Re:Self cleaning shoes?

[girl_geek_antinomy]

Isn't that usually known as rain...?

Re:I wonder how long

[shaitand]

When are we going to realize that lab rats are cancer prone in general? I think lab rat, I think cancer on a stick.

Scientists Also Discovered ...

[LordYUK]

... that if you turn the lotus sideways, it produces 3 resources, or "mana" if you will, before burying itself at the end of the round.

More ideas from nature

[mtec]

The couch (big flat rocks with lumbar support)
Fast food (grubs)
Pamela Anderson (Grand Tetons)
The Rolling Stones (dinosaur fossils)
Windows (swarms of locusts)

Re:Nature

[benzapp]

Of course, we can't forget the three biggest conrtributions from nature

Marijuana - the classic

The Poppy - heroin, morphine, opium... God's own medicine

Coca - cocaine. Nature's best stimulant

Just think of how boring civilization would be if it was not for these three mind alterning substances.

PS: Yes, so the heroin has some acetic acid, but you could conceivably get that from fermenting some fruit...

At BASF...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we don't make a lot of the nanotech you buy, we make a lot of the nanotech you buy, deadlier.

Re:self cleaning windows

[citizenkeller]

anybody else feels a bit strange at the thought of lotus technology applied to windows?

</silly mode>

I have a better solution

[DrSkwid]

I don't clean my car, haven't done for 2 years or so and my car is white.

The dirt seems to reach equilibrium.

Re:self cleaning windows

[demonbug]

Forget self cleaning windows, how about self cleaning self? Just spray this stuff on myself, and no more showers! I bet chicks dig the waxy coating, too.