This tiny orb of water on top of this mound of powder means that Pranav Sharma’s experiment worked as he hoped. Sharma, a master’s student in Neeladri Das’s lab at the Indian Institute of Technology Patna, is making materials (like this brown powder) that are superhydrophobic. That property causes water to bead up as it does here.
The new material is a combination of a covalent organic framework, a metal-organic framework, and a zirconium-organic cage—all relatively large molecular assemblies whose structures have pores. By linking building blocks from these three types of networks, the team made a new composite that has a special surface topography and low surface energy—two properties that make the material highly water repellent. Sharma says materials like this could be used for self-cleaning surfaces and corrosion resistance.
Submitted by Pranav Sharma.
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