Two chemists at the University of Massachusetts have developed a method to create a coating that would be "omniphobic" -- it would repel all liquids that people tried to put on it.
If it proves practical, then it could make graffiti vandalism very difficult but make cleaning such surfaces quite a bit easier. Paint wouldn't stick and if it was somehow laid on thick enough to create a coating when it dried, a quick swipe of the cleaning rag would remove it. Other stains would also wipe off easily.
The word "omniphobic," of course, literally means "afraid of everything," although there is a different word used for that condition. But it's used in chemistry to describe coatings that repel several kinds of substances, and the one Liming Wang and Thomas McCarthy created is not the first attempt. Such substances, although they make it difficult for liquids to stick to their surfaces, do not literally repel everything. For that you need a Donald Trump speech or Kanye West interview.
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