An international engineering team has developed a surface that can actively control how fluids or particles move across it.

The exciting research could enable new kinds of biomedical or micro-fluidic devices, solar panels that could automatically clean themselves of dust and grit, or even a new kind of computer control.

The system uses a micro-textured surface impregnated with an oily fluid infused with tiny magnetic particles, or ferrofluid.

The ferrofluid can be manipulated with magnets, pushing and pulling in all directions by applying a magnetic field to the surface.

When droplets of water or tiny particles are placed on the surface, a thin coating of the fluid covers them, forming a magnetic cloak.

The thin magnetised cloak can then pull the droplet or particle along as the layer itself is drawn magnetically across the surface.

The surface was developed in a partnership project between researchers in the US and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi half of the study was prompted by the nation's need for advanced techniques to clean the glass on its growing mass of solar power arrays, which are often rendered ineffective by desert sands. 

The surface is demonstrated in the video below;