Plastics that clean themselves? Yes, thanks to the humble lotus
Sick of cleaning your plastic stuff around the house (like the computer)? Well self-cleaning plastics might be closer than you think. From Wired:
In essence, a combination of water-repellent surface (to prevent the material absorbing it) and microscopic surface characteristics that keep dirt slightly elevated (so beads of water can pick them up) make for easy, contact-free cleaning. The hard part is in abrading the material’s surface just so. That’ll require "femtosecond pulsed laser micromachining," which sounds rather like it will cost money.
"The phenomenon of self cleaning surfaces is demonstrated in nature by the leafs of nelumbo nucifera, the lotus flower. Water droplets barely touch the leafs of this plant before forming beads and rolling off (Figure 1). Dirt is absorbed into a droplet and washed off this way." – Ir. M.N.W. Groenendijk
Tags: self-cleaning plastic
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