MIT News November 1, 2018
Omniphobic surfaces can fail during condensation. Researchers at MIT have developed a nanostructured surface that consists of isolated reentrant cavities with a pitch on the order of 100 nm to prevent droplets from nucleating and spreading within all structures. They developed a model to guide surface design and subsequently fabricated and tested these surfaces with various liquids. They demonstrated repellency to 10 °C below the dew point and showed durability over 3 weeks. The work provides important insights for achieving robust, omniphobic surfaces…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Omniphobic surfaces based on reentrant surface structures repel all liquids, regardless of the surface material, without requiring low-surface-energy coatings. Credit: ACS Nano, Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b05099