We all hate bacteria and germs, so anything that is capable of killing these (often) harmful and deadly things is welcoming. Just imagine doing all kind of nasty little things on the kitchen counter and never having to worry about germs, wouldn’t that be something? (If you get what I mean.) Well, it could soon become a reality, my good people, thanks to a rediscovered material. And what’s interesting here is that it doesn’t require a drop of disinfectant to kill the germs and bacteria.

The germ killing machine is called Black Silicon, and it’s a material that was discovered way back in the 1990s by the boys at Harvard. Only recently scientists came across its antibacterial properties after studying wings of dragonflies cicadas. They discovered that nanostructures on the wings effectively shreds and destroys bacteria that attempts to settle there. The nanostructures are around 500 meters high; Black Silicon has the same properties.

With such a design, bacteria can’t land on the surface without being destroyed by the 500 nanometres high spikes.

Now, while this idea is pretty impressing and could change our kitchen forever, we don’t know how expensive it would be to create Black Silicon on a large scale for consumer consumption. It seems we’ll be stuck spraying disinfectant onto our kitchen counter on a regular basis for the next couple of years before scientists figured out a way to bring Black Silicon to market in a big way. I have ideas, they should hire me.

[via AFP]