Research & Development World

  • R&D World Home
  • Topics
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Biotech
    • Careers
    • Chemistry
    • Environment
    • Energy
    • Life Science
    • Material Science
    • R&D Management
    • Physics
  • Technology
    • 3D Printing
    • A.I./Robotics
    • Software
    • Battery Technology
    • Controlled Environments
      • Cleanrooms
      • Graphene
      • Lasers
      • Regulations/Standards
      • Sensors
    • Imaging
    • Nanotechnology
    • Scientific Computing
      • Big Data
      • HPC/Supercomputing
      • Informatics
      • Security
    • Semiconductors
  • R&D Market Pulse
  • R&D 100
    • Call for Nominations: The 2025 R&D 100 Awards
    • R&D 100 Awards Event
    • R&D 100 Submissions
    • Winner Archive
    • Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists
  • Resources
    • Research Reports
    • Digital Issues
    • R&D Index
    • Subscribe
    • Video
    • Webinars
  • Global Funding Forecast
  • Top Labs
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE

Bio-Inspired Materials Decrease Drag for Liquids

By R&D Editors | September 6, 2018

Materials could be engineered to repel liquids without coatings when carved with a bio-inspired microtexture. Credit: KAUST 2018

An eco-friendly coating-free strategy has now been developed to make solid surfaces liquid repellent, which is crucial for the transportation of large quantities of liquids through pipes.

Researchers from KAUST’s Water Desalination and Reuse Center have engineered nature-inspired surfaces that help to decrease frictional drag at the interface between liquid and pipe surface.

Piping networks are ubiquitous to many industrial processes ranging from the transport of crude and refined petroleum to irrigation and water desalination. However, frictional drag at the liquid-solid interface reduces the efficiency of these processes.

Conventional methods to reduce drag rely solely on chemical coatings, which generally consist of perfluorinated compounds. When applied to rough surfaces, these coatings tend to trap air at the liquid-solid interface, which reduces contact between the liquid and the solid surface. Consequently this enhances the surface omniphobicity, or ability to repel both water- and oil-based liquids.

“But if the coatings get damaged, then you are in trouble,” says team leader, Himanshu Mishra, noting that coatings breakdown under abrasive and elevated temperature conditions.

So Mishra’s team developed microtextured surfaces that do not require coatings to trap air when immersed in wetting liquids by imitating the omniphobic skins of springtails, or Collembola, which are insect-like organisms found in moist soils. The researchers worked at the KAUST Nanofabrication Core Laboratory to carve arrays of microscopic cavities with mushroom-shaped edges, called doubly reentrant (DRC), on smooth silica surfaces.

“Through the DRC architecture, we could entrap air under wetting liquids for extended periods without using coatings,” says co-author Sankara Arunachalam. Unlike simple cylindrical cavities, which were filled in less than 0.1 seconds on immersion in the solvent hexadecane, the biomimetic cavities retained the trapped air beyond 10,000,000 seconds.

To learn more about the long-term entrapment of air, the researchers systematically compared the wetting behavior of circular, square, and hexagonal DRCs. They found that circular DRCs were the best at sustaining the trapped air.

The researchers also discovered that the vapor pressure of the liquids influences this entrapment. For low-vapor pressure liquids, such as hexadecane, the trapped gas was intact for months. For liquids with higher vapor pressure, such as water, capillary condensation inside the cavities disrupted long-term entrapment.

Using these design principles, Mishra’s team is exploring scalable approaches to generate mushroom-shaped cavities on to inexpensive materials, such as polyethylene terephthalate, for frictional drag reduction and desalination. “This work has opened several exciting avenues for fundamental and applied research!” Mishra concludes.

Related Articles Read More >

How IBM’s quantum architecture could design materials physics can’t yet explain
White House fast-tracks nuclear R&D while mandating ‘gold standard science’
LLNL deposits quantum dots on corrugated IR chips in a single step
Aardvark AI forecasts rival supercomputer simulations while using over 99.9% less compute
rd newsletter
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest info on technologies, trends, and strategies in Research & Development.
RD 25 Power Index

R&D World Digital Issues

Fall 2024 issue

Browse the most current issue of R&D World and back issues in an easy to use high quality format. Clip, share and download with the leading R&D magazine today.

Research & Development World
  • Subscribe to R&D World Magazine
  • Enews Sign Up
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing
  • Global Funding Forecast

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search R&D World

  • R&D World Home
  • Topics
    • Aerospace
    • Automotive
    • Biotech
    • Careers
    • Chemistry
    • Environment
    • Energy
    • Life Science
    • Material Science
    • R&D Management
    • Physics
  • Technology
    • 3D Printing
    • A.I./Robotics
    • Software
    • Battery Technology
    • Controlled Environments
      • Cleanrooms
      • Graphene
      • Lasers
      • Regulations/Standards
      • Sensors
    • Imaging
    • Nanotechnology
    • Scientific Computing
      • Big Data
      • HPC/Supercomputing
      • Informatics
      • Security
    • Semiconductors
  • R&D Market Pulse
  • R&D 100
    • Call for Nominations: The 2025 R&D 100 Awards
    • R&D 100 Awards Event
    • R&D 100 Submissions
    • Winner Archive
    • Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists
  • Resources
    • Research Reports
    • Digital Issues
    • R&D Index
    • Subscribe
    • Video
    • Webinars
  • Global Funding Forecast
  • Top Labs
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE