OFI SF7 Designing safer marine coatings for biofouling prevention: addressing reversible and irreversible damages with new materials

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

High-performance, safer alternative coatings can increase longevity, energy efficiency when moving through water, and duty cycle of marine vessels and other deployed engineered systems. Biofouling is a processes that impacts performance and longevity of marine materials and increases likelihood of transporting damaging invasive species into new coastal ecosystems. Current state-of-the art antifouling materials tend to leach hazardous substances such as copper into waterways, damaging biodiversity. Many promising bioinspired and nature-based solutions, such asshark skin (Sharklet AF), surfaces inspired by the lotus leaf, aminopolyolefins to attach self-healing antifoulants tomarine surfaces (A2O), functionalized alginate bioplastics from kelp (Bioform) and technologies inspired by the chemistry of Photosystem II (XlynX), exist in the Canadian and global markets and startup space. However, affordable methods for testing these innovative coatings under dynamic, realistic conditions that also provide enough control to make meaningful comparisons between materials and therefore base design innovations in scientifically rigorous principles are limited. In particular, lab-based tests that are faster and higher throughput than ocean deployments are scarce. Co-mitigation of biofouling and surface degradation through better, nature-inspired coatings is anintegrated design opportunity for the creation of new materials and new methods.In this Seed project we will partner with A2O to develop laboratory-based assays that allow high-throughput simulation of ocean-like environments to assess anti-biofouling properties of new materials under dynamic conditions. The focus of this Seed project will be methods development, with the goal of a larger, long-term collaboration applying these methods to new materials that are co-designed and fabricated with A2O or other partners in the Canadian marine industry.