Graphene is not as transparent to wetting as thought before

The transparency of graphene coating to wetting is not as absolute as thought before. New research from MIT shows that for materials with intermediate wettability, graphene does preserve the properties of the underlying material. But for more extreme cases — superhydrophobic surfaces, which intensely repel water, or superhydrophilic ones, which cause water to spread out — an added layer of graphene does significantly change the way coated materials behave.

These extreme cases are of greatest interest. For example, coating a superhydrophobic material with graphene was seen as a possible way of making electronic circuits that would be protected from short-circuiting and corrosion in water.