Wettability – made and measured to order – Information Centre – Research & Innovation
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The leaf of the lotus flower is famed for its capacity to drop h2o and hold by itself cleanse and dry. Can we discover from biology and layout components with comparable homes? That is the objective of the fourteen academic and industrial associates in the EU-funded OYSTER job who are checking out the wettability of surfaces and how they can be engineered to order.
Most components are either in speak to with the atmosphere or with h2o or other liquids, suggests job coordinator Marco Sebastiani, from the University of Roma Tre in Italy. So, you may perhaps want to command how the h2o interacts with all those surfaces. A surface that repels h2o, like the lotus leaf, is said to be hydrophobic. A surface that draws in h2o is hydrophilic.
The impetus at the rear of the job arrived from sector. One firm was trying to find new hydrophilic components for soft speak to lenses when yet another wished to make hydrophobic aircraft windows that drop h2o and are self-cleaning. These were two fully unique applications but the scientific issue was the similar: initial of all, how to command the wettability by engineering the surfaces and then how to measure the wettability.
Triangular tactic
OYSTER is centered on what Sebastiani calls a triangle of 3 pillars: characterisation, producing and modelling. Initial, the job is operating with the European Supplies Characterisation Council to layout conventional techniques for measuring and characterising the wettability homes of surfaces.
Then scientists will use state-of-the-art producing and coating systems to create surfaces of specified wettability. We also want to build designs that can predict what the wettability will be by switching the chemistry or morphology of the surface. So, we are operating on these 3 primary pillars and trying to deliver these state-of-the-art applications to true industrial merchandise.
Now at the halfway stage of the 4-year job, the scientists will soon comprehensive a sequence of protocols for measuring wettability and other surface homes. We are currently tests samples from the industrial associates, Sebastiani suggests. Next we will use the protocols to layout and create new components with managed wettability.
Open innovation
Even though the projects fast objective is to generate solutions for the health care and aeronautics sectors, yet another purpose is for OYSTER to direct the way in developing what is identified as an Open Innovation Setting, a web system in which scientists and firms can share ideas.
The outcomes of the job will not be limited to the two primary applications and the firms concerned, Sebastiani points out. We will share the knowledge and the know-how that we will generate in the course of the job. Then we will be equipped to uncover other firms, other SMEs in particular, that may perhaps be fascinated in these applications.
Apps could be in any area in which a reliable surface interacts with a liquid. Sebastiani thinks the most essential will be prosthetic implants these as knee and hip joints, supposed to bond with the encompassing tissue. If you can command the wettability you can command extremely finely how the cells grow on these surfaces.
Sebastiani hosted an open up day in Brussels on 28 November to showcase OYSTER and similar initiatives and, most importantly, to advertise the Open Innovation Setting for sector as a full. In long run, there will be spots for any kind of industrial issue, he suggests. This could be an motor for solving difficulties coming from sector in a much quicker, far more effective way.