Typical heat transfer correlations or surface property data assume that surfaces are smooth or that they don’t affect transport properties such as convection or radiation. However micro to nano-scaled features can have a massive effect on many macroscale continuum transport properties. In this presentation I will showcase some of our work on a simple and cheap chemical method to create superhydrophilic copper surfaces that we apply to copper foams to significantly enhance capillarity- primary for heat pipe wicks, surface metamaterials for selective solar thermal absorbers and superhydrophobic surfaces for enhanced spray cooling heat transfer rates.