How To Make Water Bounce : Blog : GE Global Research

How to make water bounce

Tao Deng
Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Niskayuna, NY USA
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Hello everyone, I have some exciting videos that I want to share with you! Using a high-speed camera setup in the lab, we can finally capture the details of the water dancing on these amazing superhydrophobic surfaces. Together with Drs. Kripa Varanasi, Ming Hsu, Nitin Bhate, and other GRC colleagues, we discovered that even when the surfaces had the same contact angle for stationary water droplets, their ability to resist the wetting of impacting droplets could be totally different.

In the following three videos, the contact angles of a stationary droplet on all three surfaces are ~150 degree. When an impacting droplet (with the same impact speed) hits on the surfaces, the droplet can either stay on the surface (video 1),

partially lift off the surface (video 2),

or totally bounce off the surface (video 3).

Look at the way the water droplet spreads, recoils, breaks into satellite droplets, and completely lifts off in video 3 – that’s what we really want for an impacting-droplet resistant surface! You might wonder what we can do with a cool thing like this? Imagine applications that involve high speed water droplets, such as wind turbine blade, airplane wing, or even just your car in motion. These are just a couple of the exciting possibilities that we are looking at.

November 13th, 2008 | Advanced Technologies, Energy

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Comments

Amazing and useful water bouncing dance!

Gheorghe Curelet-Balan | 11/14/08, 1:17 PM

Great videos ! What was the camera speed ?

Subrata | 11/17/08, 12:59 AM

Amazing. Where can I see the video?

Tianfan Cheng | 11/17/08, 3:19 AM

Are these GE hydrophilic polymers applied as a coating or used as manufacturing materials. For example, in potential self-cleaning cars production, do you use them to build the car’s body or just coat it?

Gheorghe Curelet-Balan | 11/18/08, 12:41 PM

Subrata – the speed we are using is 10000 frame/s.
Gheorghe – I can’t really get into specifics but we have many different ways of generating these types of surfaces, including the ones you mentioned.

Tao Deng | 11/20/08, 3:16 PM

[...] How to make water bounce from Edison’s desk. Using a high-speed camera setup in the lab, GE scientists captured details of water droplets dancing on amazing superhydrophobic surfaces developed in GE Global Research’s Nanotechnology lab. Tao writes – Hello everyone, I have some exciting videos that I want to share with you! Using a high-speed camera setup in the lab, we can finally capture the details of the water dancing on these amazing superhydrophobic surfaces. We discovered that even when the surfaces had the same contact angle for stationary water droplets, their ability to resist the wetting of impacting droplets could be totally different. In the following three videos, the contact angles of a stationary droplet on all three surfaces are ~150 degree. When an impacting droplet (with the same impact speed) hits on the surfaces, the droplet can either stay on the surface. [...]

Cool toys and Gadgets » Blog Archive » How to make water bounce | 11/20/08, 4:03 PM

Love the videos. Great work, GE!
/Andy
http://superhydrophobiccoating.com

Andy | 11/20/08, 6:04 PM

Great Job. fantastic video!

Tao Wang | 11/24/08, 12:00 PM

Will these compounds be viable for medical use?

Matt Z | 12/03/08, 10:50 AM

[...] Watch it at: http://www.grcblog.com/?p=364 [...]

Water droplets bouncing of superhydrophobic surfaces | SuperHydroPhobic Coating | 12/11/08, 8:58 AM

Awesome!
1000 frames/sec…how does that translate into one second video time. That is, for every second of video time, how many seconds have passed in the laboratory?
For clarification, are you saying that these are 3 different material surfaces, while the contact angle is constant throughout?
Can you make any general statements about the material constitution?

Joe Smalley | 12/12/08, 5:56 PM

Can you mention the surface roughness in nm of the material in the third video? It is an amazing material! Would there be contact angle hysteresis during the impact? Also, if possible can you tell if the surfaces have been etched to increase the contact angle? and if so did you use plasma etching or chemical etching?

Mohan | 1/15/09, 4:46 AM

Very awesome achievement. Have textile fabrics been treated by this process / material to achieve the same water repellent effect?

Alfred Lo | 3/17/09, 6:18 PM

What a coincidence, Today morning I was out in Rain and thinking can I make a material which can repel the water drops,So water can be wiped off the wind sheild. And in the evening I read this has already been done. So what ever you think is possible.
BUT WHAT IS THE EQUILLIBRIUM STATE OF THE WATER DROP SHOWN IN THE VIDEO?

Abhishek | 5/23/09, 10:48 AM

Yes these surfaces can be used in medical applications, consumer applications such as fabrics. The surfaces all had similar materials and the same static contact angle – for more details pls follow this link with several references:
http://www.nsti.org/news/item.html?id=322

Tao Deng | 6/01/09, 10:40 PM

amazing!

Tony Cole | 6/08/09, 10:43 PM

Interesting. Could this be the new way of creating carcinogen-free non-stick pans?

Bhaskar | 10/22/09, 6:32 PM

Wow, I was impressed when I saw this movies, is it possible to get such surface structure on cookware items? Could such surface treatment be used to replace PTFE coatings?

Heiko Schuler | 7/20/10, 4:56 AM

I’m curious how it would look for a water droplet to hit a normal glass surface. It would be interesting to see the comparison.

gdd2819 | 10/09/10, 2:35 PM

These videos should be exhibited at the Tate Modern Gallery in London, they have such suspence and surprise. I know you’re focused on the surface, but ordinary folk would love to see the full trajectories between bounces, so another camera or cameras cpaturing the droplet in full flight would be goggleworthy multiscreen show.

Chris | 4/09/12, 2:56 PM