The Great Sacred Lotus Cleans Up

"Though buried deep
In the slime of the pool,
Unstained and untouched
You came forth to the world
Glorious in beauty,
Pure and serene:

Yet in your innocence
Oft you deceive us
Transforming the dew
On your life-giving leaves
Into sparkling gems!"
Gonnoske Komai, 'To the Lotus-Bloom'

  Through-out human history, the lotus flower has been worshipped for many reasons. Their beauty makes it the symbol of the triumph of enlightenment over the dross of earthly life. This flower is such an influence in the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese culture that the name is a byword for 'purity'. In these different cultures, you can find poems describing the lotus and how it unfolds its leaves from dirt and muck, being completely clean. If you did not know, the lotus flower typically thrives in shallow ponds, lagoons, and marshes making it rare to see bright colored flowers in a mucky environment. With one look at this flower you would wonder how such beauty evolved to grow in a dirty place. It's almost like magic, if you were to drop a single droplet of water onto a lotus leaf, it would easily fall off the leaf with ease. A comparesson to this would be like dropping mercury on a table. This would potentially become known as the Lotus-Effect.
   The discoverer of the Lotus-Effect was Professor Wilhelm Barthlott, the director of the Nees-Institute of Bio-diversity at Bonn, Germany. After the scanning electron microscope (SEM) was invented, Barthlott was able to view the surface of flowers in fine detail. But to be able to study something under the SEM microscope, the specimen needed to be cleaned because contaminants could ruin a picture. Barthlott started to realize that the specimen's that did not need to be cleaned before viewing it had the roughest surfaces. When a surface of a flower has a lot of little and tiny bumps, it forms to become a water-repellent substance. In other words, the water sits on top of the tiny bumps as shown in the diagram to the right.

These bumps make it difficult for dirt to adhere to the surface so when water passes over the dirt it takes the dirt with it. The bumps also make it so water rolls off the surface at a low contact angle. Flowers that had the roughest surface were always 'clean-looking'. Barthlott's discovery became the most noticeable in the lotus flower, calling this effect the 'Lotus-Effect'.
   Barthlott knew that his discovery could potentially be used in commercial products. His next step was to create a technical demonstration of the self-cleaning effect and so he then created the 'honey-spoon'. Barthlott made a homemade spoon with his micro-rough silicone surface. When the spoon was placed into a honey jar, the honey fell off the spoon with ease. In 1994, this simple demonstration helped him apply for a patent.
   In 1998, the Lotus-Effect teamed with Ispo's paint to create an exterior building paint called Lotusan. It comes with a 5-year no cleaning guaranteed and has been very successful in the German industry. This product is the only bio-inspired product to have made serious profits.