The objective of the HYDROPHO-CHEAP project is to optimize, protect, and commercialize a recently developed novel technology process that allowed us to achieve “tailor-made” control of the wettability of polymer surfaces, rendering them super water-repellent. In particular, we use a laser setup to engrave perfect superhydrophobic patterns on Teflon (PTFE) surfaces in environmental (real-life) conditions. The achieved superhydrophobicity is exceptional, performing water contact angles (CA) of 160 deg and a roll-of angle < 5 deg. In practice, this means that liquid droplets cannot stay on the treated surface which can remain dry and clean. We drew our inspiration from nature, mimicking the morphology of lotus leaves that display natural superhydrophobic properties.
What makes our technique unique is its significant features/advantages including: a) High spatial resolution of micron-meter scale, b) Rapid fabrication (indicatively 1 cm2/ s), c) Low cost (10 cents/cm2, but depends on the application), d) Robustness in terms of longevity (moths or even years).
In our business plan we examined the potential market on the novel technology for the 3 targeted applications a ) Microfluidics, b) Superhydrophobic surfaces for low friction flows, c) Fog harvesting.
In microfluidics, Teflon, the material that our method deals with, is considered as a great alternative (with prices comparable to PDMS) and it offers a lot of advantages like: resistance to molecular adsorption, inertness to almost all chemicals and solvents, durability in higher temperatures for chemical reactions. Our methodology takes these properties even further and it gives us the ability to improve the accuracy of the microfluidic devices by easily controlling the movement of fluids at nano-scale, by for example, creating a gradient of wettability. In addition, the proposed modification method, by laser irradiation, is a one-step process and it is faster (and potentially cheaper), compared to soft lithography, which is currently used by microfluidic chip manufacturers.
Creating superhydrophobic surfaces that reduce the effective contact area between the liquid (e.g sea) and the solid substrate (e.g. a ship’s body) will result in a considerable increase in fuel efficiency and speed of a ship. The proposed method, however, offers a lot of advantages (low cost and rapid fabrication) rendering it a suitable candidate for such large-scale and real-life applications. Teflon based paints are already used in marine applications and our methodology will be applicable in processing relatively thick (order of 1 mm) Teflon layers.
Probably the most under-explored, among the various unconventional water collection/ purification methods, is the potential to harvest water from the humid air. A simple and sustainable technology, that has attracted increasing attention over the past few decades, offering the potential to produce clean water in some regions of the world, is the collection of fog. Here we can prepare cheap synthetic surfaces, mimicking the Namib Desert beetle, for collecting water in arid areas.
In this project we have built a prototype device for fabricating tailor-made superhydrophobic surfaces and we have performed a market analysis for exploiting our technology. The prototype device located in our lab can fabricate superhydrophobic ‘islands’ over a flat area of 10 cm x 10 cm, in environmental conditions and with a spatial resolution of 100 μm (micron meters). The prototype can be easily modified to make the same task on curved i.e. non flat surfaces. The market analysis examined the potential market of the novel technology for the targeted applications, namely: Superhydrophobic surfaces, Microfluidics and Fog harvesting. In this analyses we saw that the most prominent market to enter is the one of microfluidics, and more specific applications in the healthcare sector. This market has a very significant size (USD 4,748.18M in 2018 and it is estimated to reach USD 13,348.29 M) and in this market Hydrophocheap has a distinct advantage of processing polymer based surfaces, which have the largest share in the global microfluidic devices market. On the other hand in the superhydrophobic surfaces market the existing solutions that are currently available (paints/ coatings) are significantly cheaper and in fog harvesting the market is practically nonexistent, since the demand of nets and textiles is exclusively determined by the execution of projects for water collection. We have still not patented our technology since during the duration of the project the level of technological readiness remains low and as a result the team decided to keep the IP for the time being as secret know how
