Perfect Bead Blue-dyed water droplets sitting on a transparent nanotaper surface (left) and on flat glass (right), each placed on top of printed black letters. The insets are top views of the same two surfaces. Hyungryul Choi and Kyoo-Chul Park
The superhydrophobic glass shares some properties with the super-waterproof fabric coating we learned about this week, and it, too, is a feat of nano-engineering. But instead of a waterproof coating, it earns its special properties through a special etching process. Kyoo-Chul Park, Hyungryul Choi and colleagues drew inspiration from nature, including zebra plants, which contain conical structures that repel water. They developed a method to embed an array of steeply angled cones on the surface of glass. More