Water-repellent leaves

Researchers report that the leaves of the floating fern

Salvinia molesta

, which repel water due to a slippery air mattress trapped in microstructures on the leaf surface, can efficiently and robustly recover the air mattress following collapse because interconnected wedge-shaped grooves between epidermal cells allow replenished air to rapidly spread over the entire leaf; the authors fabricated artificial, 3D-printed

Salvinia

leaf surfaces that exhibited air mattress recovery and that could prove useful in an array of underwater applications.

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Article #19-00015: “Superrepellency of underwater hierarchical structures on

Salvinia

leaf,” by Yaolei Xiang et al.

MEDIA CONTACT: Huiling Duan, State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Peking University, Beijing, CHINA; tel: +86-1062753228, +86-13121988096; e-mail: <

[email protected]

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