http://www.economist.com/node/21560978
more at link
WHEN it comes to repelling gunk, car wax and Teflon are among the best materials available. But they could be better. A good measure of their lack of stickiness is their “water contact angle”—a way of measuring how effectively the material repels water. For car wax it is 90° and for Teflon, 95°. The higher the angle, the more repellent the surface is—and the cleaner it stays. As anyone with a car or a non-stick frying pan knows, however, the microscopic wax or Teflon layers gradually wear away, and their protective ability is lost. So finding a way to make the layers bond together more strongly would also keep surfaces cleaner. Tong Lin, a chemist at Deakin University in Australia, thinks he has found a trick that can both increase the contact angle and improve resilience, using an idea familiar from basic chemistry: the covalent bond.
i apologize in advance that this aint about some a rah rah post over some fancy new $$$ gear ;)
