Hydrophobic concrete has been produced since the mid-20th century.
Active recent research on superhydrophobic materials might eventually lead to more industrial applications.
A simple routine of coating cotton fabric with silica or titania particles by sol-gel technique has been reported, which protects the fabric from UV light and makes it superhydrophobic.
An efficient routine has been reported for making polyethylene superhydrophobic and thus self-cleaning. 99% of dirt on such a surface is easily washed away.
Patterned superhydrophobic surfaces also have promise for lab-on-a-chip microfluidic devices and can drastically improve surface-based bioanalysis.
In pharmaceuticals, hydrophobicity of pharmaceutical blends affects important quality attributes of final products, such as drug dissolution and hardness. Methods have been developed to measure the hydrophobicity of pharmaceutical materials.
The development of hydrophobic passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) surfaces, whose effectiveness at solar reflectance and thermal emittance is predicated on their cleanliness, has improved the "self-cleaning" of these surfaces. Scalable and sustainable hydrophobic PDRCs that avoid VOCs have further been developed.