Surface Innovations

The material innovations on surfaces, combined with understanding and manipulation of physics and chemistry of functional surfaces and coatings, have exploded in the past decade at an incredibly rapid pace. Superhydrophobicity, superhydrophlicity, self-cleaning, self-healing, anti-fouling, anti-bacterial, etc., have become important fundamental topics of surface science research community driven by curiosity of physics, chemistry, and biology of interaction phenomenon at surfaces and their enormous potential in practical applications. Materials having controlled-functionality surfaces and coatings are important to the manufacturing of new products for environmental control, liquid manipulation, nanotechnological advances, biomedical engineering, pharmacy, biotechnology, and many others, and are part of the most promising technological innovations of the twenty-first century.