Black Silicon Slices and Dices Bacteria

Zothecula writes "Originally discovered by accident in the 1980s, black silicon is silicon with a surface that has been modified to feature nanoscale spike structures which give the material very low reflectivity. Researchers have now found that these spikes can also destroy a wide range of bacteria, potentially paving the way for a new generation of antibacterial surfaces."

Comments

Heard it all before

[Tablizer]

"It slices!, it dices! and chops and grinds for all your bacteria processing needs! No more fuss and muss! No more missing mitochondria! And all this can be yours for 4 low monthly payments of just $39.99! It's a limited offer, so get yours nooowwww!"

Re:Radar

[FatdogHaiku]

Happily, I read down the thread this far instead of rushing out to get a few square meters of double sided tape and a half a million dragonfly wings... thanks for saving my time and I'm pretty sure all the dragonflies that won't have to walk home would also be appreciative.

Re:They found similar structure on insects' wings

[Charliemopps]

I was going to mod you up, but they don't have an option for "You just made my head assplode"

I'll have a go

[srussia]

I wish the best of luck to whoever gets to model the behavior of a mixed (mostly) nonpolar gas interacting with a dense, more or less randomly packed, array of 240nm spikes, composed of some sort of complex biological polymer arrangement, at the boundary of the (already complex enough) interaction between an insect wing and the surrounding fluid.

Let us suppose a perfectly spherical spike in a vacuum...