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New "Hairy" Material Is Almost Perfectly Hydrophobic
drewsup writes "Wolfgang Sigmund, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida, has created a material modeled after spider hairs that acts as a nearly perfect water-repelling surface. Quoting Science Daily: 'A paper about the surface, which works equally well with hot or cold water, appears in this month's edition of the journal Langmuir. Spiders use their water-repelling hairs to stay dry or avoid drowning, with water spiders capturing air bubbles and toting them underwater to breathe. Potential applications for UF's ultra-water-repellent surfaces are many, Sigmund said. When water scampers off the surface, it picks up and carries dirt with it, in effect making the surface self-cleaning. As such, it is ideal for some food packaging, or windows, or solar cells that must stay clean to gather sunlight, he said. Boat designers might coat hulls with it, making boats faster and more efficient.' Hairy glass, anyone?"
People call me hydrophobic but it's like water off a ducks back to me.
America, Home of the Brave.
. Spiders use their water-repelling hairs to stay dry or avoid drowning, with water spiders capturing air bubbles and toting them underwater to breathe.
Oh we'll see about that...
Time to do some original research of my own
So when can i chuck out my gore-tex jacket for something like this?
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
It has rabies?
Available here free of charge:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/la903813g
Hairy food packaging. I think someone will come up with a better name for that material.
"See, it repels water .." STOMP! SQUISH! "... used to repel water."
So much for the self-cleaning materials idea.
Would there be a (very) thin layer of air between the boat and the water? Would there be a reduction in friction akin to the thin layer of water created when a skater's skates press down on the ice?
Or would boats go faster because no barnacles or mussels could become fastened on the hull of a boat? (I've heard that this used to be combatted with very toxic copper based compounds, no idea what they use now). If these microscopic hairs that were lifted from spiders work really well in preventing "fouling", why haven't whales evolved the same?
Just askin'.
Yogi Berra must have been hydrophobic too.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm sure the uses are limitless, but one thing I wonder is what would happen to a car's traction through puddles if you put this material in the treads of tires?
This article is worthless without videos.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
... I asked my cat and she somehow didn`t look surprised. How many lifes does this new stuff have?
when the records start falling in the next olympics.
Sure it will be self cleaning for dirt, but I imagine that a something this hydrophobic is going to be a grease magnet. I can't wait to clean the chinese food off my spider coat.
And it was discovered on the same day that Richard Stallman entered the labo- oh wait!!
Is it basically indestructible too?
The current problem they are having with it is that it is very fragile. If they can figure out how to apply this technique and keep it durable and mass producible then this really will change a lot of things. Its also pretty interesting how they note that we imagine things like this to have some uniformity, but they found that the pattern is strangely abstract, with some fibers being curved and some not etc. Anyway, cool stuff regardless.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
it's called "fur".
Coating a ship with this could save a large percentage of fuel used. Once a ship is in motion a lot of the energy is used to overcome friction.
Sound true enough to me. Sometimes the people who don't shower are also hairy and disgusting.
I'm sure all those loose broken-off nanohairs, are going to do ahhhhhh my ahhhhhtsm-heeeee ... ahzm-whiiiiiiiiifffffffffff ... asthma .... ahhhhhhh - a lot of good.
After all, they're technological. And therefore completely different from natural irritants - sucha as cat's hairs, pollen or random bursts of chelisserae (don't ask). :)
Yeah, that's neat, but can I use it to climb walls?
Here's the video. Fascinating stuff-- the first sample is a copper plate with copper oxide crystals coated in a material very similar to Teflon.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
What slick piece of engineering!
(I'll be here all night ;)
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
There is a punk rock group in Russia named "Hairy glass" (translated from Russian of course, original reads "Volosatoye steklo")
Another well known hairy material is asbestos. Just sayin'
What happens when there is a surfactant in the water?
Also, not so sure that most spiders can stay completely dry like a polar bear can.
Oh, by the way, don't bother trying to trademark the name 'Polar Hair'. It's already taken.
Superhydrophobicity by thin trapped air layers is not new at all - I recall seeing a seminar in my physics department ~10 years ago. The self-cleaning aspect does work nicely, but generally the surface structures lack the durability to last long enough to be useful. It also doesn't work for boat hulls because the air slowly dissolves into the water until the trapped air layer is lost.
A commercial application could be using the hairs as a water resistant surface on coats and rain jackets. If these hairs are mass producible, then a process similar to artificial fleece production could be constructed. This would surely be highly profitable if sold in high rain environments like the NW of the US and South American countries.
I see a whole new genre of Watermusic coming. Hopefully it eliminates rap.
Take a RIDE RIde Ride ride... on hairy metal.
What good is it not to touch water, when you are touching a spider hair surface instead? I can keep dry just as well, by covering it in a rubber suit. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
how'bout
It seems like this would be good as a battery/fuel cell air cathode. You could put this stuff, then a layer of activated charcoal, then a current collector. This would cause the water-air interface to be somewhere inside the activated charcoal, so you would end up with a huge surface area of the air/water interface. This would improve alkaline fuel cells of all types (aluminium, iron, zinc and hydrogen).
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
'A paper about the surface, which works equally well
When it seems the paper the wrote works equally well?
*ducks*
Hairy? Check. Water-repellent? Check. How hard is this, guys?
All's true that is mistrusted
I'd like to see this stuff on the interiors of convertibles and boats. Shirts too.
So you're saying something that you don't actually believe just to upset the people who take you seriously? Seems like some sort of weird, desperate, misguided grab for the wrong kind of attention. Or is it just pure malice, spreading negative emotions like nails on the freeway?
I would actually have more respect for a misguided racist individual who truly believes in "nigger grease" than for someone who would say something like that knowing full well it isn't true just to cause harm.
That said, I do actually agree with your basic principle that many "politically correct" people take the race issue way too seriously and, by getting offended inappropriately, actually perpetuate racism. But trying to call attention to it in this manner is adding fuel to the fire, not doing anything constructive.
Knowledge != Intelligence
I bet it gives cancer. ...
And as for hairy glass, I would not bet it's transparent
by the way, there are already auto cleaning glasses. Saint Gobain here in France produces them.
Don't you see what genetically enhanced smart towels like these are capable of? You get out of the shower and dry yourself off. But even after you're dry, the towel makes you more dry. It keeps getting you drier and drier. Can you imagine it? What it would feel like to be way, way too dry? I'll tell you something: You don't want to know. And I don't know.