2013

We provide an overview of our recent advances in the manipulation of wetting in inverse-opal photonic crystals. Exploiting photonic crystals with spatially patterned surface chemistry to confine the infiltration of fluids to liquidspecific spatial...

Various life forms in nature display a high level of adaptability to their environments through the use of sophisticated material interfaces. This is exemplifi ed by numerous biological systems, such as the self-cleaning of lotus leaves, the water-walking...

A living organism is a bundle of dynamic, integrated adaptive processes: not only does it continuously respond to constant changes in temperature, sunlight, nutrients, and other features of its environment, but it does so by coordinating hierarchies of...

The emergence of complex nano- and microstructures is of fundamental interest, and the ability to program their form has practical ramifications in fields such as optics, catalysis, and electronics. We developed carbonate-silica microstructures in a...

Omniphobic surfaces that can repel fluids at temperatures higher than 100 °C are rare. Most state-of-the-art liquid-repellent materials are based on the lotus effect, where a thin air layer is maintained throughout micro/nanotextures leading to high...

Certain natural organisms use micro‐patterned surface chemistry, or ice‐nucleating species, to control water condensation and ice nucleation for survival under extreme conditions. As an analogy to these biological approaches, it is shown that...

Colourimetric sensors and indicators are widely used because of their low cost and simplicity. A significant challenge associated with the design of this type of device is that the sensing mechanism must be simultaneously optimised for the sensitivity of...