PhD-Thesis

Self-Cleaning is a dream-to-come-true property for various coatings. Once again, Mother Nature is a great source of inspiration, providing many examples of self-cleaning. Amongst them, probably the most elegant example is the lotus leaf. Despite growing in muddy water, the lotus leaves always remain clean. The self-cleaning property originates from a combination of low surface-energy species and dual-size surface topology, leading to a syperhydrophobic surface