Video: MIT Engineers Design Fog-Free, Water-Repellent, Anti-Glare Glass

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

A new type of nano-structured glass can bounce water and dirt off its surface, cleaning itself and preventing fogging, according to MIT researchers. It eliminates glare, too, allowing light to penetrate with pure clarity. It could be used for anything from solar panels to future car windshields to new gadget screens.

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.

Related Articles

	Super Nano-Waterproof Coating Actively Shrugs Off Water, Grease and Would-Be Stains
	Nanoparticle Coating Makes Paper Magnetic, Waterproof, and Antibacterial
	New Metallic Glass Beats Steel as the Toughest, Strongest Material Yet

Tags

Technology, Rebecca Boyle, coatings, glare, glass, glasses, nanostructures, nanotechnology, photovoltaic cells, waterproofing

Initially, it’s water-loving, but a simple vapor deposition process renders the material hydrophobic, the researchers say. The coating is not only completely transparent, but reduces glare, too. To test its waterproof capabilities, the team poured a droplet of water on the surface, filmed it with a Phantom high-speed camera and watched it form an almost perfect spherical bead.

There are plenty of applications for such a self-cleaning, water-repelling surface, not the least of which is solar panels, which are only as effective as they are clean and clear. Dirt and crud can block the photovoltaic cells’ ability to capture sunlight, and the reflective properties of glass direct some sunlight away from the cells, especially when the sun is at a sharp angle relative to the glass. But this new surface coating would eliminate all those problems, the researchers say.

The paper was just accepted for publication in the journal ACS Nano.

[via MIT News]