Scientists Develop Super-Slippery Material 298
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Anyone who is partial to ketchup with their food will know how difficult it is to get the final dregs from the bottle but now the Telegraph reports that scientists have created one of the most slippery materials ever that promises to result in new self-cleaning surfaces that never get dirty, could be used to coat the inside of bottles and jars to help consumers get all of the food inside, or in the energy industry for making oil flow more efficiently through pipes. Professor Joanna Aizenberg, a materials scientists at Harvard University, was inspired by the carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants, which has a highly slippery surface at the top of its flute-shaped leaves so that insects tumble down into the digestive juices contained inside. The new material, known as a Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surface or SLIPS boasts a rare trait called "omniphobicity", which means it can repel both water and oily materials. "If we used substance like ours to coat the inside of bottles, it would be possible to get it all out," says Aizenberg. "The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food.""
Prior Art (Score:2)
Aperture Science Blue Repulsion Gel.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Informative)
"The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food."
Now, if it comes shooting out of the top after you open it, that would be the blue gel.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Funny)
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When it comes to sex, friction is your FRIEND.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Funny)
YOU'RE FUCKING WRONG.
Are you saying "You're REALLY REALLY wrong." ?
or are you saying "When you fuck, you are not doing it correctly." ?
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Sorry but I'm with him. SOME friction is your friend. This is why anal sex feels better than vaginal sex, more points of CONTACT. There is nothing worse than the over application of lubricant (or sex with a condom which is similar in ways). Friction and touch go hand in hand. Lubrication reduces friction but without any friction there is no touching happening.
Contraceptives? (Score:5, Funny)
Contraceptive compatible?
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It's a contraceptive in its own right. Just skoosh in some of that before you go, and nothing is going to stick :p
Re:Contraceptives? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm not sure sex would be that enjoyable without any sensation of friction from the parts that are being rubbed together...
I'm sure there will be lots of volunteers to test that aspect of it. Besides, it didn't say frictionless. It said slippery.
Only one way to be sure... (Score:2)
Hurry boys! To the labs!
Re:Only one way to be sure... (Score:4, Funny)
"and girl!"
There was a movie about this (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044876/ [imdb.com] -- We all know the ending.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Keynesian economics presented in film.
Nice. I'll have to look for it.
flubber (Score:2)
Re:flubber (Score:5, Funny)
no, it's the propulsion gel...for science!
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bouncy != slippery
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Solar Panels??? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it has good UV stability and doesn't block to much sun light; it would be great for use on solar panels that otherwise need to be cleaned in order achieve peak performance.
Underpants? (Score:5, Funny)
This opens a world of possibilities to the industry of underwear... First you don't need to iron, now you don't need to wash xD.
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You iron your underwear?
Re:Underpants? (Score:5, Funny)
no .. his mom does ...
Re:Underpants? (Score:4, Funny)
This (Score:5, Funny)
This was the first post
but it slipped down here.
they could just ask politicians (Score:5, Funny)
plenty of politicians are made of this stuff.
Practical application... (Score:5, Funny)
Think of the practical joke possibilities... floors, door handles... oh colleagues' coffee mugs.
I think the Health & Safety people are going to clamp down on this one.
Re:Practical application... (Score:5, Funny)
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I think the Health & Safety people are going to clamp down on this one.
Well, I certainly hope the food industry does. Howzbout we test this stuff before we just start coating our pots and pans with the shit. (Like Telfon, ya know?)
I, for one, am not looking forward to all my food tasting like cancer.
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Better not grill anything then!
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Yes!
Does anyone else see the potential for coating food containers with a brand-new, not-found-in-nature substance that no one's ever eaten or tested before?
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, and the logs and analysis of early antarctic expeditions make fascinating reading.
Simpler approach (Score:4, Interesting)
For ketchup, just put the bottle upside down. Gravity will place all the ketchup at the tip of the bottle. For bottles with nozzles, simply unscrew the top to get the very last spoonful.
Peanut butter on the other hand is more challenging. Natural peanut butter tends to flow easier so is not as much of a problem. But the generic peanut butter is quite sticky.
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Peanut butter on the other hand is more challenging. Natural peanut butter tends to flow easier so is not as much of a problem. But the generic peanut butter is quite sticky.
Just store the peanut butter upside down.
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We store our natural peanut butter upside down so the oil is at the bottom of the jar and the solid is at the top when we open it the first time. When ready to open, we flip it over and stir for a couple of minutes until the consistency is even. It seems to stay consistent for as long as the peanut butter lasts, which is usually less than 3 days in our house. A little inconvenient, but worth the effort to have food that tastes real.
Re: (Score:2)
Put it in the microwave upside down on 20-30% power in 30 second increments. It will melt the peanut butter and it'll flow.
Re:Simpler approach (Score:4, Informative)
Here's another tip: don't put regular plastic containers in the microwave.
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Put the peanut butter jar in the microwave for 3 seconds. The remains will pour out then harden when it cools.
Toothpaste is where it's at (Score:3)
Forget all the condiments, what really needs different packaging is toothpaste. The current solution is wasteful and a major PITA. Toothpaste should be sold in big syringes (think caulk gun) that go into wall-mounted holders in the bathroom. Give it a crank, some toothpaste comes out. Then it's easy, no tube-rolling crap involved, and a toothpaste cylinder could last over a year - much more eco-friendly and easier to recycle than a shitload of dumb little tubes.
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Get a pack of these things. [amazon.com] I believe that I found mine at home and garden show--and it's just a damned nice little invention.
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I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
...what happens when this super slippery meets that super sticky gecko tape http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/07/1615221/gecko-inspired-tape-can-be-reused-thousands-of-times [slashdot.org]. Logic bomb?
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You can't insure against the universe-ending explosion! You would never be able to collect!
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That is just what the insurance companies want you to think.
Actually, since the insurance company is pretty sure that the end of the world won't happen, they would rather you buy the insurance....
*continues stabbing the joke more to make sure it's entirely dead.*
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Actually, all you need to do is survive the end of this universe, wait for the reboot and then wait until the insurance company is back [wikipedia.org] and then you can collect your insurance.
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The marketing department needs to get on that. For right now, unstickyable object vs. sticks-to-anything tape just doesn't have the cachet that unmovable object vs. the unstoppable force does, but with the proper market penetration, we think we can capture a good chunk of mindshare within 8-10 years.
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...what happens when this super slippery meets that super sticky gecko tape http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/07/1615221/gecko-inspired-tape-can-be-reused-thousands-of-times [slashdot.org]. Logic bomb?
There will be a tear in the space-time continuum, the neutrinos will cross the Alpine mountain faster than light.
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A moderate amount of friction? :-P
(seriously, I'd put my money on the slippery stuff. Slippery always beats sticky in my experience.)
Could you use this on a submarine? (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't you use something like this to improve the efficiency of submarines, or perhaps aircraft?
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Exactly. Practical uses include getting catsup out of the bottle? really, that's it? So my dad doesn't have to leave empty (to all but his standard) balanced on their lids so he can get that last french fry's worth of condiment?
Even if the stuff doesn't take well to heat, put it in barrings. The main source of heat in barrings is friction, so if this stuff works as well as they say, it will should keep.
Re:Could you use this on a submarine? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bearings, not barrings. Bearings don't slip. Bushings do. Bearings fail from wear caused by the sticking and unsticking of the rollers on the races. A little of the friction on aircraft is from skin drag, but much more is from the bumpiness of the surface above the thousandths, form drag and interference drag. Submarines and surface vessels might benefit greatly from it, but as much from preventing barnacles and crap from sticking. If you've never scraped a hull, you don't understand. Windmills are laminar flow creatures which might benefit from this, if they stay clean. The guy with the solar panel notion might be onto something.
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Submarines and surface vessels might benefit greatly from it, but as much from preventing barnacles and crap from sticking.
That was my thought as well, although I'm afraid the guy who pointed out that nothing touted on /. as the next great thing ever comes to market is correct. It would in fact be worth going through the /. archives to precisely quantify just how few "on the market in the next three-to-five years" predictions come true. My bet is fewer than 1%, possibly as low as 0.
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Absolutely, however I suspect they may run into durability issues.
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The reason it works for golf-balls and aircraft is it reduces form drag. Obviously, if you are talking about a pipeline, there is no form drag and therefore no benefit. Here is an article [aerospaceweb.org] that explains the phenomena in good detail.
Likewise, when you're talking about streamlined shapes, boundary layer separation is not the main cause of drag. Rather the main cause of drag is friction (or skin drag). Making the surface more slippery would help reduce friction, though I suspect only if viscosity of the fluid i
Re:Could you use this on a submarine? (Score:5, Informative)
The pressure drop rate in a pipeline depends on velocity, the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces (aka Reynolds number), and the ratio of the dimension of pipe surface roughness to pipe diameter (aka e/D). For relatively low velocity, low density, high viscosity flows the pipe surface roughness does not matter. For relatively high velocity, high density, low viscosity flows the pressure drop is a proportional to the square of the velocity times length divided by diameter and function of the log of e/D (greater pressures with higher roughness). Investigate the Darcy Weisbach equation [wikipedia.org] and formulas for estimating friction factors [wikipedia.org]
Still, even if proven to be cheap, I imagine this might have limited application in pipelines, since age, corrosion, and erosion take their toll in actual service.
we already have that... (Score:5, Funny)
Why re-invent the wheel, just skin a few politicians.
Proposed rename (Score:3)
"SLIPS" sounds boring. Plus, it's the wrong word type - it look like a verb, but it's trying to be a noun. Not going to take off.
I propose the name "lawyerite", after the second-slipperiest material known to mankind.
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Neverwet (Score:5, Informative)
Have a look at http://www.neverwet.com/ [neverwet.com] They also have some amazing case studies showing off what the material can do, and where some use cases are.
Accident waiting to happen... (Score:2)
"It also repels ice and so is not prone to icing up, which would be ideal on aircraft wings..."
Seems like a bad idea if anyone has to walk on the wings for maintenance.
Re:Accident waiting to happen... (Score:5, Informative)
I assume that, in this use case, they'd coat the rest of the wing and either ignore or otherwise deal with the service walkways.
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Unfortunately that area (generally around the center of the wings) is also where most of the ice builds up...
Even Better! (Score:3)
The Teflon effect (Score:3, Insightful)
This is sort of like "I've just invented an acid so strong it will eat through ANYTHING! It's right over there in that bottle... oh shit!"
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So... if this material is so slippery, how are they going to get it to stick to the surfaces they want to make more slippery?
Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surface. I'm no expert on the subject, but I think it might be a liquid (which is slippery) that is infused into a surface which is porous.
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Very much like oilite bearings.
Granular brass is pressed into the shape of the bearing. Oil is then forced through it, infusing all the little nooks and voids that are left by the pressing process.
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Exactly. There is no mention of how they attach it to something to begin with. Can it only be applied to "low-surface-energy structured materials (such as porous Teflon membrane)? Is it only effective on liquids? It would be nice to know if one could use it "paint" surfaces to protect them from insects, rust, mold, etc.
Griswold! (Score:3, Funny)
Be careful if you're thinking of applying this to your snow sled.
The first beta test (Score:4, Funny)
I found a video of one of the first tests of this material. They sprayed it on the bottom of a sled so they could measure how much faster it could get down the hill. The results are fairly impressive [youtube.com].
And it's available just in time for Christmas! (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpCVrzVr97M [youtube.com]
I think not!
.
windshield coating? (Score:3)
paint (Score:2)
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Paint your car-tyres with it and you'll never have to clean them again and they'll wear much more slowly and give you a boost in fuel economy due to reduce friction!
and, when ingested .... (Score:2)
imagine how effective this will be as it begins to coat the insides of the intestines, not to mention the lungs.
Recycling? (Score:2)
If you spray this material on the inside of cans and bottles, does it allow for cost effective recycling still? I can imagine this might be an issue increasing the cost of packaging more then is being saved by the contents.
Frank Herbert fixed it for you (Score:4, Interesting)
Can the lubricating fluid be controlled? (Score:2)
scientists designed a strategy for creating slippery surfaces by infusing a nano/microstructured porous material with a lubricating fluid.
Can the lubricating fluid be controlled? If so, then perhaps the slipperyness could be controlled.
For example... have a non-slippery floor most of the time (somewhat safer) then moisten it when cleaning it. (Those "Slippery when wet" signs would then actually mean what they say.)
Or how about (as others have suggested) applying it to solar panels (if it doesn't block UV rays, etc.). But when needing to walk on them for maintenance you wear shoes that repel the fluid. That would cause the shoes to bypass
No thanks. (Score:2)
"The only problem may be that the sauce may come out a little too easily on to their food.""
I love how this is shoved at the bottom, like it's some minor problem. I highly doubt this stuff is safe to ingest, please keep it out of my containers |:
Engines? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Too late (Score:3)
Silvio Berlusconi could have used this last week.
some observations from reading the paper (Score:4, Informative)
Just a couple points I want to make:
- Nowhere in the paper is there anything about using this stuff in ketchup bottles. I'm sure the researchers seized on this when they got interviewed as a simple way to explain lyophobicity to a general audience, the effect of which was to make "getting all the ketchup out of the bottle" the only thing anyone remembers. Typical.
- As for the significance of the research, there has been a ton of work in the last, oh, say 10-20 years on superhydrophobic surfaces, which have texture on the scale of a few nm that prevents water or other high surface tension liquids from penetrating into these tiny cracks. The water drops energetically prefer to remain as spherical as possible and so the liquid is repelled. This doesn't work with low surface tension liquids like light oils because it would rather penetrate inside the texturing than stay in a roughly spherical drop. The neat advance in this work is the addition of a low surface tension liquid which is introduced into the textured Teflon or fluorinated silane surface and repels both water and oil. They can use lots of different chemicals for the liquid, so as they continue the research they will find that some resist high heat, others are bio-inert, etc etc. so there are many possible applications.
Re:Not for cooking sadly (Score:4, Informative)
In other article covering same research project, they sadly say [evenweb.com] that said material is very temperature sensitive, thus unusable for cooking. Still nice curiosity.
Goatse
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What about toilets, showers, sinks...
Re:Not for cooking sadly (Score:5, Funny)
Remind me not to eat a meal that you've cooked.
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A possibility. I've noticed that more expensive bathroom fixtures lately seem to be water-repellent in an interesting way--water forms into tiny sphere-like bits (we might call them "drops") and moves along the surfaces rather than adhering to the surface and sort of sliding down it.
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Maybe you could get some of this on the inside of your toilet...
Re:just hurry up and do it (Score:4, Funny)
Then why (Score:2)
Why produce bottles with fat tops that let you easily set them spout down? That helped lots of people get more out of their bottle of ketchup. Now you don't have to wedge the skinny-top bottle upside down between others in the fridge, only to have everything fall back to the bottom at the dinner table.
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Not really, it's a sales gimmick. Less on the sides, but more on the larger lid. Appearance of more used, but actually about the same.
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To gain an edge on the competition. Similar ketchup bottles already exist, just imperfect.
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If they have anyone as cynical as that working there, they'll just make the bottle smaller, like they did with Innocent Smoothies, which are now down to 750mL cartons instead of 1L. Price is unaffected, of course.
Environmental impact (Score:4, Interesting)
Specifically, one wonders about the environmental impact--how hard must this stuff be *to clean* when it gets stuck on something, for example? If we put it on a hundred million bottles a year, how will that impact the environment?
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It's a slippery subject for sure.
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Slippery doesn't mean it is hard. Notice how teflon is fairly non-stick, but you can still scratch it quite easily with any metal utensil. In the same way I kinda suspect you will be able to just scrub this stuff away. It is also likely to be sensitive to temperature and some chemi
Re:New Teflon (Score:5, Informative)
I'm tired of this bullshit articles. I mean, kudos to the guy who came up with this, and I'm sure it works great in a lab, but in real life it probably is just as good as teflon. And as someone who actually cooks, I can tell you that teflon is overrated.
You know what's a good non-stick surface? Take a good ol regular steel pan, the black ones. Rub it with cooking oil, and leave it to burn. You get a cloud of white smoke (man, a tiny bit of oil goes a long way!). When it's done, you have a layer of burnt oil that has penetrated every pore in the steel surface. BAM! Instant "teflon", wash your pan thoroughly with manual dishwashing detergent (don't use a dishwasher machine, it will take the layer off), and you're good to cook.
This is how pans and pots and everything has been "cured" for centuries, and works perfectly. It's how you treat a wok when you buy it, and it's what happens to your grill over time.
Wanna test it? Try frying an egg. On brand new, pristine condition Teflon, the egg won't stick. After a few uses the teflon surface gets microscopic scratches, and the egg starts sticking. On burnt oil? It never sticks. And every time you cook, some oil refills the new scratches so it auto-protects itself.
Re:New Teflon (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a good ol regular steel pan,
Better yet, cast iron.
I hate Teflon pans, you have to cuddle them like a fragile little creature or they get scratched. In comparison you can scrub the cast iron ones with steel wool or even sand blaster them ( yes really ) and all it takes to get them back to pristine condition afterwards is a drop of veg oil.