CHANGCHUN, CHINA, Sep 16, 2021 - (ACN Newswire via SEAPRWire.com) - Several plants and animals have evolved surfaces with long-term (i.e., days to months) air-retainability to prevent wetting and submersion. One example is Salvinia, a plant floating on water. The secret "how do they maintain an air-mattress" has been unraveled by researchers. Salvinia leaves and the eggbeater structuresResearchers at Jilin University reviewed recent progress in the study of Salvinia leaves and their artificial replicas. "Salvinia has complex multicellular hairs on the upper side of its leaves, and each group of four hairs is connected at the terminal ends, forming an eggbeater structure. The hairs are coated with hydrophobic wax crystals, while the patches at the terminal ends of the hairs lack wax crystals and are, therefore, hydrophilic. These features make the air-water interface more stable, exhibiting long-term air-retention ability," says author Huichao Jin of Jilin University in Changchun, China.Since the air-retention ability of Salvinia leaves was discovered, researchers began to fabricate artificial Salvinia leaves and investigated their potential applications. However, the complex eggbea...