Superhydrophilic means it actually attracts water. We actually turned the surface hydrophilic

to such a strong degree that water runs uphill against gravity. That technology can have

many applications on its own. After that, we started to work on the counterpart technology,

making surface to repel water or as we call it, hydrophobic. We have been working on creating

superhydrophobic material using a laser processing technique. What we see here is pretty interesting.

The water falls to wards the surface and is repelled and bounces off the surface. This

is achieved by creating a unique pattern of surface structures at micro and nano scales

with our laser processing technology and those structures are intrinsically part of the material’s surface.

Most of the hydrophobic surfaces available today rely on chemical coatings.

Our surface has many advantages over the coatings out there. First our surface has a much stronger

hydrophobic effect than the coatings and secondly, we don’t have to worry about coatings peeling

off and the surface degrading over time. Many people think of Teflon as a strong hydrophobic

material. However, if you want to get rid of water on a Teflon surface you have to tilt the

surface to about 70 degrees before the water starts to slide off slowly. Our surface requires

an extremely small angle, if at all, for water to slide off. I think there are many possible

applications for this new superhydrophobic surface. For instance, if a surface repels

water, you will also prevent icing on the surface, you will be anti-corrosive and there’s

sanitation applications as well. We wanted to create this superhydrophobic surface that

will not only repel water but also repels water containing a waste materials. We know

in many developing countries in the world, clean water is a scarce resource so if you

create a toilet instead of using a lot of water to flush the toilet, would require little

or no water but still stay clean and dry.