When I wrote The Gecko’s Foot, published in 2005, I took a punt on a handful of new technologies derived from nature that seemed to me the most promising. I confess that I didn’t fully realise just how long the lead time could be in bringing such techniques to fruition. But six years on, most of them are burgeoning and beginning to fulfil their promise. It seems a good time to check them, one by one.
Far and way the lead technology is the Lotus Effect: self-cleaning surfaces that are either superhydrophobic or superhydrophilic, inspired by the age-old symbol of purity, the sacred lots plant. Many labs across the world have contributed to this and there are now many products on the market with self-cleaning properties. St Pancras station in London now has a roof of self-cleaning glass. The latest twist is to the create surface that are omniphobic – meaning equally repellent to oil and water. This is quite hard to do, oil and water having notoriously different wetting properties. But this now seems possible by mimicking the pitcher plant, which lives by luring insects into its pitcher: the walls are intensely slippery and once in, nothing gets out. You can read all about it in Nature, 2011, 477, p. 443.
Far and way the lead technology is the Lotus Effect: self-cleaning surfaces that are either superhydrophobic or superhydrophilic, inspired by the age-old symbol of purity, the sacred lots plant. Many labs across the world have contributed to this and there are now many products on the market with self-cleaning properties. St Pancras station in London now has a roof of self-cleaning glass. The latest twist is to the create surface that are omniphobic – meaning equally repellent to oil and water. This is quite hard to do, oil and water having notoriously different wetting properties. But this now seems possible by mimicking the pitcher plant, which lives by luring insects into its pitcher: the walls are intensely slippery and once in, nothing gets out. You can read all about it in Nature, 2011, 477, p. 443.
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