Grant: Idea to Innovation

Water and oil repellence (or hydrophobicity and olephobic) of a solid surface is an important property of materials. Some natural solid surfaces such as lotus leaves possess this property and demonstrate attractive advantages. One special feature is the reduction of the liquid-to-surface friction which would find many applications in various industrial sectors including water and oil transportation pipelines and marine vessels etc. Self-cleaning, insulation, antibacterial and rust-proof are the other advantages with wide potential applications from household and hospital use to the construction industry.Although much interest has been invested to mimic the natural super-hydrophobicity in recent years and some studies have produced hydrophobia surface with a contact angle as high as 160 degrees, none of them can produce reliably a hydrophobia surface with enough mechanical strength. In contrast to those prior arts that use liquid coating procedure where the nano hydrophobia particles cannot bond well on the coating surface, a new powder coating approach is proposed to bond the nano hydrophobia particles so that a much more durable hydrophobia coatings can be produced. Proof-of-concept study has shown that this is a viable approach in producing hydrophobicity and retaining the durability of hydrophobic coatings. This technology will bring revolutionary changes to the specialty coating industry. The proposed research is to further exploit this technology for commercialization.The applicant has had many years of experience in powder processing and handling, including powder coating. The Particle Technology Research Centre at UWO and the large amount of equipment purchased through several recent CFI grants will provide the necessary infrastructure for the proposed project. The applicant also has a long collaborating relationship with many powder coating companies including Shawcor who supports this project.