The left-hand side image is a computer rendering of a surface covered by a 2D periodic lattice of cones. When decorated with nanometer sized cones, the surface can acquire a superhydrophobic function. It means that the wettability of the surface by water is very small. A well-known natural example is the lotus leaf on which water droplets does not stick at all due to a particular sub-micrometer structure of the leaf surface. The structure illustrated on the left-hand side is predicted to be superhydrophobic in some range of the geometrical parameters such that the nanoscopic corrugation strongly reduces the Van der Waals interaction between the surface and a water droplet [2].

Grafting a polymer network onto a solid is a widely used technique to tailor surface properties, such tribology, corrosion, wetting ... [3]. The first step in the making of a so-called polymer brush consists in anchoring initiators (for instance alkyl bromides) on a functionalizable surface (silicon, gold, titanium ...). These molecules are schematized by the blue, gray and red objects standing on the surface. Eventually, an initiator becomes sort of a tether that binds a polymer chain to the surface by one of the chain ends (white ball in the figure). For clarity of the drawing, only three polymer chains have been represented (green features).