These are tests showing the durability of the repellent coating under just two of various conditions that it can weather.
A self-healing, water-repellent spray-on coating developed at the University of Michigan is hundreds of times more durable than its counterparts and could enable waterproofing of vehicles, clothing, rooftops and countless other surfaces for which current waterproofing treatments are too fragile. It could also lower the resistance of ship hulls, reducing the fuel consumption of the massive ships that transport ninety percent of the world’s cargo.
The developers say the new concoction is a major breakthrough in a field where decades of research have failed to produce a durable coating. While water-repellent coatings are available at present, they tend to be far too fragile for applications like clothing or ship hulls. This discovery changes that.
“Thousands of superhydrophobic surfaces have been looked at over the past twenty or thirty years, but nobody has been able to figure out how to systematically design one that’s durable,” explains Anish Tuteja, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at U-M. “I think that’s what we’ve really accomplished here, and it’s going to open the door for other researchers to create cheaper, perhaps even better superhydrophobic coatings.”
The coating is made of a mix of a material called “fluorinated polyurethane elastomer” and a specialized water-repellent molecule known as “F-POSS.” It can be easily sprayed onto virtually any surface and has a slightly rubbery texture that makes it more resilient than its predecessors.
How do you test your research? Try to break it. #SuperhydrophobicCoating
If it is damaged, the coating can heal itself hundreds of times. It can bounce back “even after being abraded, scratched, burned, plasma-cleaned, flattened, sonicated and chemically attacked,” the researchers