Wettability – made and measured to order – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

The leaf of the lotus flower is famed for its skill to drop water and maintain by itself clean and dry. Can we study from biology and design elements with identical houses? That is the objective of the 14 educational and industrial companions in the EU-funded OYSTER job who are checking out the ‘wettability’ of surfaces and how they can be engineered to purchase.

‘Most elements are both in speak to with the environment or with water or other liquids,’ says job coordinator Marco Sebastiani, from the University of Roma Tre in Italy. ‘So, you could want to handle how the water interacts with these surfaces.’ A floor that repels water, like the lotus leaf, is claimed to be hydrophobic. A floor that draws in water is hydrophilic.

The impetus guiding the job arrived from sector. 1 company was looking for new hydrophilic elements for gentle speak to lenses while yet another needed to make hydrophobic aircraft windows that drop water and are self-cleansing. ‘These had been two wholly distinctive applications but the scientific dilemma was the exact: very first of all, how to handle the wettability by engineering the surfaces and then how to measure the wettability.’

Triangular method

OYSTER is centered on what Sebastiani calls a ‘triangle’ of three pillars: characterisation, producing and modelling. Very first, the job is doing the job with the European Supplies Characterisation Council to design common approaches for measuring and characterising the wettability houses of surfaces.

Then scientists will use innovative producing and coating systems to develop surfaces of specified wettability. ‘We also want to establish designs that can forecast what the wettability will be by changing the chemistry or morphology of the floor. So, we are doing the job on these three most important pillars and making an attempt to convey these innovative applications to true industrial products and solutions.’

Now at the midway place of the 4-calendar year job, the scientists will shortly full a collection of protocols for measuring wettability and other floor houses. ‘We are presently testing samples from the industrial companions,’ Sebastiani says. ‘Next we will use the protocols to design and develop new elements with controlled wettability.’

Open up innovation

Even though the project’s fast objective is to develop solutions for the health care and aeronautics sectors, yet another intention is for OYSTER to direct the way in making what is known as an Open up Innovation Setting, a website platform the place scientists and corporations can share tips.

‘The results of the job will not be limited to the two most important applications and the corporations included,’ Sebastiani clarifies. ‘We will share the knowledge and the information that we will develop for the duration of the job. Then we will be ready to find other corporations, other SMEs in unique, that could be intrigued in these applications.’

Apps could be in any field the place a stable floor interacts with a liquid. Sebastiani thinks the most crucial will be prosthetic implants these kinds of as knee and hip joints, supposed to bond with the bordering tissue. ‘If you can handle the wettability you can handle extremely finely how the cells improve on these surfaces.’

Sebastiani hosted an open up day in Brussels on 28 November to showcase OYSTER and relevant projects and, most importantly, to boost the Open up Innovation Setting for sector as a full. ‘In upcoming, there will be spots for any form of industrial dilemma,’ he says. ‘This could be an motor for solving issues coming from sector in a a great deal more quickly, much more successful way.’