Green strategies for antifouling coatings
In the last few decades, many efforts have been spent into developing efficient antifouling (AF) surfaces (coatings) combining advances in materials science and recent knowledge of marine chemistry and biology.
However, the extensive use of toxic and harmful compounds in the formulations raised increasing health and environmental concerns leading to stricter regulations which pushed marine industries to search for new AF strategies.
Two main approaches are reviewed
With their review, researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, present the recent research progress made in green strategies for AF coatings using non-toxic, non-biocide-release based principles for marine applications. The two main approaches, detachment of biofoulants or preventing biofoulants attachment, are reviewed in detail and new promising routes based on amphiphilic, (super)hydrophilic, and topographic (structured) surfaces are highlighted. The chemical and physical aspects of the AF mechanisms behind the AF strategies reviewed are emphasised, with special attention to the early stages of biofoulant adhesion, keeping the focus on the materials' molecular structure and properties which allow obtaining the final desired antifouling behaviour.
The study is published in: Journal of Materials Chemistry B, Issue 32, 2015.
