Inside Science highlights Bhushan’s research

MAE research, highlighted by Inside Science, will get the last drop out of bottles 
 

Everyone has been there. Trying, sometimes quite desperately, to get the last drop out of a bottle of your favorite shampoo, dish soap or laundry detergent.

Ohio Eminent Scholar and Winbigler Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Bharat Bhushan and Philip Brown, a postdoctoral researcher, have invented a coating for the inside of polypropylene bottles to solve this very problem.

Their work was recently highlighted by Inside Science, an editorially independent news service of the American Institute of Physics that explores the modern scientific landscape.

The new coating, which uses tiny y-shaped structures made of nanoparticles, helps liquids roll right out of bottles.

"It's annoying to the consumer – you look at your cap, and the cap is filthy. It collects the shampoo or the detergent, and also you’re not able to get the last drop of the liquid out of the bottle, which means you’re throwing money away,” said Bhushan, during his feature in the Inside Science video.

"To develop a coating which will repel shampoo and repellent and a variety of oils, we're inspired by the lotus leaf,” said Bhushan.

Bhushan and Brown’s patent-pending technology was also featured in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society last June.

See their work in action, using their new coating, in the Inside Science video here.

Read the team’s full journal article, Liquid-Impregnated Porous Polypropylene Surfaces for Liquid Repellency, in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science (Volume 487), published on Feb. 1, 2017. 

This article was updated on April 25, 2017.

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