A team of IIT students has come up with an ingenious self-cleaning surface that could bring an end to dusting.
Nandini Bhandaru of Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and her teammates have invented a water and oil resistant "nano-structure" from which dirt and oil would just roll off on its own, ET reported.
In a country like India, where dust and dirt often tend to be oily and get stuck on surfaces easily, this surface could prove revolutionary in cleaning anything from hard-to-reach street lights to solar cell panel cells and glass windows in high-rise buildings, and the unsightly dust stuck on our touchscreen devices.
Bhandaru, who has won the Indian Science Congress Association's 'Young Scientist Award' in 'Engineering Science', said these nano-structure coatings alter the properties of dust and grime-attracting ordinary surfaces.
"Gravity is the most important force, but in the nano world this has no role. Hence it is easier to change properties completely at nano-scale," she said.
Bhandaru claims these "nano-structures" can be manufactured on a large scale for less than Rs 100 compared to Rs 30,000 to Rs 1 lakh of machine-made patterns.
The team has already patented these products and could seen be looking at industrial production of these surfaces, according to the report.