For years the DREAM Lab has investigated PDMS brushes and their ultra-low contact angle hysteresis (CAH) properties. One attribute leading to low CAH is smoothness down to the molecular level. So imagine our surprise when we stuck PDMS brushes under an AFM and saw large clusters on their surface! Weird, right? Behrooz did some digging and figured out that we were actually observing longer chains of PDMS de-wetting from shorter brushes in a process known as autophobic behaviour. Essentially PDMS repelling PDMS. Even cooler than that, it turns out you can engineer PDMS brushes to exhibit many of these clusters and these protect the surface from physical abrasion. What started as a strange AFM height map morphed into a new design space for fabricating durable omniphobic surfaces. Really great work by Behrooz and all his co-authors. Check out Autophobic dewetted polydimethylsiloxane nanodroplets enable self-healing omniphobic surfaces
