I Can't Wait for This

Glass that cleans itself

Eyeglasses need never again to be cleaned, and dirty windscreens are a thing of the past! Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and the Technical University Darmstadt are now much closer to achieving this goal. They have used candle soot to produce a transparent superamphiphobic coating made of glass. Oil and water both roll off this coating, leaving absolutely nothing behind. Something that even held true when the researchers damaged the layer with sandblasting. The material owes this property to its nanostructure. Surfaces sealed in this way could find use anywhere where contamination or even a film of water is either harmful or just simply a nuisance.

I came to glasses late in life (well past 40), and keeping eyeglasses smudge free is not yet instinctive.  Every now and then I realize just how gross they've become, and I'm startled at how clear things become again after I clean them.  Similarly, car windshields seem to be almost beyond our ability to clean and keep clean.  A few extra bucks for a coating that would keep these clean indefinitely would be well worth it.