A team of engineering researchers at the University of Michigan has developed a nanoscale coating that causes almost all liquids to bounce off surfaces treated with it. Made up of a mixture of rubbery plastic particles of “polydimethylsiloxane” (PDMS) and liquid-resisting nanoscale cubes containing carbon, fluorine, silicon and oxygen, the coating is applied to surfaces using a technique known as electrospinning, which uses an electric charge to create fine solid particles from a liquid solution. These solid particles that hug the pore structure of the surface it is applied to and create a finer web within those pores.

So far, Tuteja and his colleagues have applied the coating to small tiles of screen and postage-stamp sized swatches of fabric. After testing more than 100 liquids, the researchers found only two that were able to penetrate the coating – both chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are used as refrigerants in air conditioners and refrigerators.

Already proven effective on coffee, soy sauce, vegetable oil, gasoline, and various alcohols, the coating can also repel acids that could burn skin, such as hydrochloric and sulfuric acids. Tuteja says the coating is also the first demonstrated to repel low surface tension non-Newtonian liquids. These are liquids, such as shampoos, custards, blood, paints, clays and printer inks, that change their viscosity depending on the amount of force applied to them.