Lotus Effect — Water Repellence on Leaf Surface

Description

The lotus effect — superhydrophobicity produced by the hierarchical surface micro-structure of the lotus leaf — causes water droplets to form near-perfect spheres on the leaf surface rather than spreading into a flat puddle. The micro-texture creates a contact angle of greater than 150 degrees, and droplets roll off the surface carrying contaminating particles with them, making the lotus leaf self-cleaning. At 3:1 macro reproduction, the water droplets on the lotus leaf surface are photographed as perfect spherical lenses: each droplet contains a complete wide-angle reflection of the environment — a curved fish-eye image of the sky, surrounding vegetation, and the camera itself — the image inside each droplet perfectly sharp and undistorted by the spherical surface geometry. The leaf surface texture is visible at the edge of each droplet’s contact zone, the micro-papillae structure responsible for the superhydrophobicity just at the resolution limit.