Superhydrophobic surfaces

Non-wettable surfaces with high water contact angles (WCAs) and facile sliding of drops, called superhydrophobic or ultrahydrophobic, have received tremendous attention in recent years. New publications have appeared in the last year documenting many new ways to prepare such surfaces-ranging from application driven work to make robust self-cleaning surfaces to careful model studies of patterned surfaces seeking to understand the relationship between surface morphology and wettability and droplet sliding. This review summarizes this recent work and looks ahead to future developments. The emphasis of the review is on the diverse methods that have been developed to make such surfaces. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.