Today, McKinley says, he and Cohen in conjunction with another MIT professor, George Barbastathis, have successfully developed a highly transparent surface texture and chemical treatment that repels water, but doesnt yet effectively repel finger oil. Nailing that oil-resistant quality, however, is probably just a matter of time.

Perhaps the most serious roadblock McKinley and Cohen are working through is the same one the researchers at the Max Planck Institute struggle with: Their surface treatment still is not durable enough to withstand a reasonable amount of the wear and tear that comes with the day-to-day life of a touchscreen device.

The real concern is the mechanical robustness, the reliability of the treatment, McKinley says. The oleophobic coating has to be tough enough to resist being scratched or rubbed off after coming into contact with objects like keys.

McKinley compares the challenge to the one faced by the developers of the Teflon surfaces used in nonstick frying pans. When they first came out with frying pans treated with Teflon to make them nonstick, they had same kind of reliability problems, but they still went to market, and, McKinley adds, the Teflon coatings got more and more durable after their introduction. McKinley believes the same thing will likely happen with smudge-resistant treatments used on computer touchscreens.