Oil adhesion and pollution to aquatic devices, especially to those oil-cleaning devices and equipment-repairing robots during oil spill accidents, has drawn great attention and remains an urgent problem to be resolved. Developing devices with anti-oil-adhesion surfaces that can move freely in an oil/water system without contamination from oil has both scientific and practical importance.

Recently, under the supports of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Institute of Chemistry, researchers in the Key Laboratory of Organic Solids designed a model device“oil strider” with low oil-adhesion “legs” that couldfloat freelyinoil/water system without contamination by oil. The floating capability of the oilstrider originated from the underwater low oil-adhesion capability the “legs” ownedandthe huge underwater superoleophobic supporting force its“legs” received. The researchers prepared the micro/nanohierarchical structured copper-oxide-coated copper wires, acting as theartificial legs of oil strider, by a simple base-corrosion process. The surface structures and hydrophilicchemical components of the coatings on copper wires induced the underwater low oil-adhesion capability of the wiresandthe huge superoleophobic force atthe oil/water interface, to support the oil strider from sinking into the oil. Experimental results andtheoretical analysis demonstrate that this supporting force is mainly composed of three parts: thebuoyancy force, the curvature force, and the deformation force. The results have been published in ACS Nano (ACS Nano 2012, 6, 5614-5620), and reported specially by ACS Chemical &Engineering News.