Now, a new material takes a cue from one of the plant world's few meat-eaters: the carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes 
Their most slippery surface resulted when they added a layer of the perfluorinated fluid 3M Fluorinert FC-70, manufactured by the firm 3M, to Teflon. The liquid oozed into all the pores in the Teflon, and left a nanometres-thin layer of liquid at the top. The material still feels dry to the touch, and other liquids simply hydroplane off the surface, like a car sliding off a wet road. The team calls the material 'slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces,' or SLIPS.
"We call it SLIPS, because everything does," Aizenberg says. The materials could be useful for making self-cleaning windows, friction-free oil and water transport pipes, and safe and efficient blood transfusion devices, she adds.
SLIPS beat the lotus leaf in several arenas. They're more slippery – liquids from water to oil to blood lose contact with the surface when it's tilted by an angle as shallow as 2 degrees, whereas liquids held to other surfaces tilted from 5 to 30 degrees. They can also recover from damage, because the lubricating liquid naturally seeps back in to any holes. And because liquid is incompressible, the material can be used at pressures equivalent to 7 kilometres underwater.
"It's interesting that it combines self-lubrication, self-healing and self-cleaning, which are different processes," says Michael Nosonovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "It's a new type of smart material."
