Even low surface-tension liquids such as shampoo will also slide along the slipper surface created.
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What awful quality unites all bottled cleaning items like shampoo, conditioner and liquid detergent? We forgot to pop to the shops to pick up a new bottle of shampoo/shower gel/conditioner.
The new coating could also aid in recycling, as it makes the bottles easier to clean, and in biomedical devices, catheters, and other plastic products that need to stay clean.
With this technique in place, they say the soap never actually touches the inside of the bottle, so it flows freely.
The Ohio State University engineer Philip Brown said: “You end up with air pockets underneath, and that’s what gives you liquid repellency”.
Furiously smashing a shampoo bottle against the wall to get the last bits of product out, before attacking it with nail scissors in a last ditch attempt to get your money’s worth, could soon be a thing of the past.
Coatings already exist to help food, but not soap, pour out of their containers.
It might sound like a first-world problem but with more than 20 million kilograms of soapy bottles piling up every year in the U.S. alone, it causes a serious headache for recycling because they need to be completely clean on the inside before they can be processed.
In a study published Monday in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the two scientists outline how they borrowed from nature – specifically, the slippery leaves of the lotus plant – to create a better shampoo bottle surface. None of these, in the eyes of Ohio State University engineering professor Bharat Bhushan, are ideal. They look like shaggy heart-shaped pillows, but they’re hard as glass.
Bhushan told CNBC that the product potentially has many uses. The branches of the “y” overhangs reduce surface tension by providing a cushion of air together with stiff angles too steep for droplets to stick to the plastic, and consequently soap and other kinds of droplets slide smoothly off the surface.
The researchers tested the slipperiness of their specially coated surfaces by adding droplets of an oil (hexadecane), which rolled right off. I have a few in my shower right now.
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The bottles are not in existence yet, but the University hopes to continue to develop the coating technique and then license it to manufacturers.
